to understand, sir," he asked, "that you are serious in
what you said to me last November? Are you actually resolved to bind me
to that incomprehensible condition?"

"I don't call it incomprehensible," said the admiral, irritably.

"Don't you, sir? I am to inherit your estate, unconditionally--as you
have generously settled it from the first. But I am not to touch a
farthing of the fortune poor Noel left you unless I am married within
a certain time. The house and lands are to be mine (thanks to your
kindness) under any circumstances. But the money with which I might
improve them both is to be arbitrarily taken away from me, if I am not a
married man on the third of May. I am sadly wanting in intelligence, I
dare say, but a more incomprehensible proceeding I never heard of!"

"No snapping and snarling, George! Say your say o ut. We don't
understand sneering in Her Majesty's Navy!"

"I mean no offense, sir. But I think it's a little hard to astonish
me by a change of proceeding on your part, entirely foreign to my
experience of your character--and then, when I naturally ask for an
explanation, to turn round coolly and leave me in the dark. If you and
Noel came to some private arrangement together before he made his will,
why not tell me? Why set up a mystery between us, where no mystery need
be?"

"I won't have it, George!" cried the admiral, angrily drumming on the
table with the nutcrackers. "You are trying to draw me like a badger,
but I won't be drawn! I'll make any conditions I please; and I'll be
accountable to nobody for them unless I like. It's quite bad enough to
have worries and responsibilities laid on my unlucky shoulders that I
never bargained for--never mind what worries: they're not yours, they're
mine--without being questioned and cross-questioned as if I was a
witness in a box. Here's a pretty fellow!" continued the admiral,
apostrophizing his nephew in red-hot irritation, and addressing himself
to the dogs on the hearth-rug for want of a better audience. "Here's a
pretty fellow? He is asked to help himself to two uncommonly comfortable
things in their way--a fortune and a wife; he is allowed six months to
get the wife in (we should have got her, in the Navy, bag and baggage,
in six days); he has a round dozen of nice girls, to my certain
knowledge, in one part of the country and another, all at his disposal
to choose from, and what does he do? He sits month after month, with his
lazy legs crossed