well for me such a person doesn't exist. I shouldn't easily have
found a wife."

"He would have gone to the altar with a little money in his pocket."

"That would have been the least of his advantages, sir," Nick declared.

"When are you to be married?" Mr. Carteret asked.

"Ah that's the question. Julia won't yet say."

"Well," said the old man without the least flourish, "you may consider
that when it comes off I'll make you a settlement."

"I feel your kindness more than I can express," Nick replied; "but that
will probably be the moment when I shall be least conscious of wanting
anything."

"You'll appreciate it later--you'll appreciate it very soon. I shall
like you to appreciate it," Mr. Carteret went on as if he had a just
vision of the way a young man of a proper spirit should feel. Then he
added; "Your father would have liked you to appreciate it."

"Poor father!" Nick exclaimed vaguely, rather embarrassed, reflecting on
the oddity of a position in which the ground for holding up his head as
the husband of a rich woman would be that he had accepted a present of
money from another source. It was plain he was not fated to go in for
independence; the most that he could treat himself to would be
dependence that was duly grateful "How much do you expect of me?" he
inquired with a grave face.

"Well, Nicholas, only what your father did. He so often spoke of you, I
remember, at the last, just after you had been with him alone--you know
I saw him then. He was greatly moved by his interview with you, and so
was I by what he told me of it. He said he should live on in you--he
should work in you. It has always given me a special feeling, if I may
use the expression, about you."

"The feelings are indeed not usual, dear Mr. Carteret, which take so
munificent a form. But you do--oh you do--expect too much," Nick brought
himself to say.

"I expect you to repay me!" the old man returned gaily. "As for the
form, I have it in my mind."

"The form of repayment?"

"The form of repayment!"

"Ah don't talk of that now," said Nick, "for, you see, nothing else is
settled. No one has been told except my mother. She has only consented
to my telling you."

"Lady Agnes, do you mean?"

"Ah no; dear mother would like to publish it on the house-tops. She's so
glad--she wants us to have it over to-morrow. But Julia herself," Nick
explained, "wishes to wait. Therefore kindly mention it for the present
to no one."

"My d