tter.

"You will find her the dearest girl. Most loving, and tender-hearted;
and full of life and spirits."

"Good heavens!" says the professor. He puts down the letter again,
and begins to pace the room. "'Life and spirits.' A sort of young
kangaroo, no doubt. What will the landlady say? I shall leave these
rooms"--with a fond and lingering gaze round the dingy old apartment
that hasn't an article in it worth ten sous--"and take a small
house--somewhere--and ... But--er----It won't be respectable, I think.
I--I've heard things said about--er--things like that. It's no good in
_looking_ an old fogey, if you aren't one; it's no earthly use"--standing
before a glass and ruefully examining his countenance--"in looking fifty
if you are only thirty-four. It will be a scandal," says the professor
mournfully. "They'll _cut_ her, and they'll cut me, and--what the _deuce_
did Wynter mean by leaving me his daughter? A real live girl of
seventeen! It'll be the death of me," says the professor, mopping his
brow. "What"----wrathfully----"that determined spendthrift meant, by
flinging his family on _my_ shoulders, I----Oh! _Poor_ old Wynter!"

Here he grows remorseful again. Abuse a man dead and gone, and one, too,
who had been good to him in many ways when he, the professor, was
younger than he is now, and had just quarrelled with a father who was
always only too prone to quarrel with anyone who gave him the chance
seems but a poor thing. The professor's quarrel with his father had been
caused by the young man's refusal to accept a Government
appointment--obtained with some difficulty--for the very insufficient
and, as it seemed to his father, iniquitous reason, that he had made up
his mind to devote his life to science. Wynter, too, was a scientist of
no mean order, and would, probably, have made his mark in the world, if
the world and its pleasures had not made their mark on him. He had been
young Curzon's coach at one time, and finding the lad a kindred spirit,
had opened out to him his own large store of knowledge, and steeped him
in that great sea of which no man yet has drank enough--for all begin,
and leave it, athirst.

Poor Wynter! The professor, turning in his stride up and down the
narrow, uncomfortable room, one of the many that lie off the Strand,
finds his eyes resting on that other letter--carelessly opened, barely
begun.

From Wynter's solicitor! It seems ridiculous that Wynter should have
_had_ a solicitor. Wi