written--the letter that you will understand conveys to the family I
represent, the last wishes of one whose memory we hold in the most sacred
love and reverence----"

The Right Honourable Privy Councillor had here to stop and dry his eyes,
that were frankly overflowing. Though short, and not at all distinguished
of appearance, having derived from his mother, the Dowager Countess, nee
Miss Nancy McIleevy, of McIleevystown, County Down, certain personal
disadvantages to counterbalance the immense fortune amassed by her uncle,
the brewer, this little gentleman of great affairs possessed the kindly
heart, and the quick and sensitive nature of the paternal stock. Now he
continued:

"--Under the circumstances you will permit me to renew the proposal with a
slight modification. The sum we proposed to invest in Government
securities for Mrs. Saxham's benefit, carrying out a charge that we regard
it as a privilege to--to have received--is not large, merely five thousand
pounds." He coughed. "Well, now it has occurred to me that Mrs. Saxham's
objection to receive what she seems to regard as a gift from people upon
whom she has no claim--that is how she expressed herself to Lady
Castleclare--might be got over--if I may employ the expression, by our
settling the money upon your children?"

"Upon our children----"

They were sitting in Lord Castleclare's library at Bawne House, Grosvenor
Square. Great books in gilded bindings gleamed from their covered and
latticed shelves, and the perfume of Russia leather and cedar mingled with
the aroma of rare tobacco in the air. A thin fog hung over the West End,
deadening the sound of traffic, and dimming the polish of the tall
plate-glass windows. The fire burned red behind bars of silvered steel,
the ashes fell with a little clicking whisper. It seemed to Saxham that he
could hear his pierced heart bleeding, drip, drip, drip! But he sat like a
man of stone, his white, firm, supple hand clenched upon the carved knob
of the chair-arm. Then he said, looking the Right Honourable Privy
Councillor full in the face with those gentian-blue eyes of his, now sunk
in caves that grew deeper day by day:

"Let it be so, my lord. I am willing, if my wife consents, that the money
should be settled upon--her children."

He prescribed, at Lord Castleclare's request, for a political dyspepsia,
and took leave in his brusque, characteristic way, and sent away his
waiting motor-brougham, and walked home,