gainst you
personally."

"That is satisfactory anyhow," Cuthbert said, calmly. "I don't know how
I should get on without it. Of course I shall be sorry to lose this
place, but in some respects the loss will be almost a relief to me. A
country life is not my vocation, and I have been wondering for the last
fortnight what on earth I should do with myself. As it is, I shall, if
it comes to the worst, be obliged to work. I never have worked because I
never have been forced to do so, but really I don't know that the
prospects are altogether unpleasant, and at any rate I am sure that I
would rather be obliged to paint for my living than to pass my life in
trying to kill time."

The lawyer looked keenly at his client, but he saw that he was really
speaking in earnest, and that his indifference at the risk of the loss
of his estates was unaffected.

"Well," he said, after a pause, "I am glad indeed that you take it so
easily; of course, I hope most sincerely that things may not be anything
like so bad as that, and that, at worst, a call of only a few pounds a
share will be sufficient to meet any deficiency that may exist, still I
am heartily glad to see that you are prepared to meet the event in such
a spirit, for to most men the chance of such a calamity would be
crushing."

"Possibly I might have felt it more if it had come upon me two or three
years later, just as I had got to be reconciled to the change of life,
but you see I have so recently and unexpectedly come into the estate
that I have not even begun to appreciate the pleasures of possession or
to feel that they weigh in the slightest against the necessity of my
being obliged to give up the life I have been leading for years. By the
bye," he went on, changing the subject carelessly, "how is your daughter
getting on in Germany? I happened to meet her at Newquay three weeks
ago, and she told me she was going out there in the course of a week or
so. I suppose she has gone."

"Yes, she has gone," Mr. Brander said, irritably. "She is just as bent
as you were, if you will permit me to say so, on the carrying out of her
own scheme of life. It is a great annoyance to her mother and me, but
argument has been thrown away upon her, and as unfortunately the girls
have each a couple of thousand, left under their own control by their
mother's sister, she was in a position to do as she liked. However, I
hope that a year or two will wean her from the ridiculous ideas he has
ta