onciliation to her
father, she would go over with her baby-boy to the Hall and remain there
for days together. Captain Monk liked to have her, and he took more
notice of the baby than he had ever taken of baby yet. For when Kate was
an infant he had at first shunned her, because she had cost Katherine
her life. This baby, little Walter, was a particularly forward child,
strong and upright, walked at ten months old, and much resembled his
mother in feature. In temper also. The young one would stand sturdily in
his little blue shoes and defy his grandpapa already, and assert his own
will, to the amused admiration of Captain Monk.

Eliza, utterly wrapt in her child, saw her father's growing love for him
with secret delight; and one day when he had the boy on his knee, she
ventured to speak out a thought that was often in her heart.

"Papa," she said, with impassioned fervour, "_he_ ought to be the heir,
your own grandson; not Harry Carradyne."

Captain Monk simply stared in answer.

"He lies in the _direct_ succession; he has your own blood in his veins.
Papa, you ought to see it."

Certainly the gallant sailor's manners were improving. For perhaps the
first time in his life he suppressed the hot and abusive words rising to
his tongue--that no son of that man, Hamlyn, should come into Leet
Hall--and stood in silence.

"_Don't_ you see it, papa?"

"Look here, Eliza: we'll drop the subject. When my brother, your uncle,
was dying, he wrote me a letter, enjoining me to make Emma's son the
heir, failing a son of my own. It was right it should be so, he said.
Right it is; and Harry Carradyne will succeed me. Say no more."

Thus forbidden to say more, Eliza Hamlyn thought the more, and her
thoughts were not pleasant. At one time she had feared her father might
promote Kate Dancox to the heirship, and grew to dislike the child
accordingly. Latterly, for the same reason, she had disliked Harry
Carradyne; hated him, in fact. She herself was the only remaining child
of the house, and her son ought to inherit.

She stood this evening at the drawing-room window, this and other
matters running in her mind. Miss Kate, at the other end of the room,
had prevailed on Uncle Harry (as she called him) to play a game at toy
ninepins. Or perhaps he had prevailed on her: anything to keep her
tolerably quiet. She was in her teens now, but the older she grew the
more troublesome she became; and she was remarkably small and
childish-looki