"

"Quite; I have, as you say, made great sacrifices in order to do so."

"I rather wonder at you," Valentine added; "there was no great risk,
hardly any, in fact."

"I do not at all repent my choice," said John with a smile in his eyes
that showed Valentine how useless it was to say more. John was amused,
surprised, but not moved at all from his determination. He thought
proper to add, "My father, as you know, left two thousand pounds each
to every one of my children."

"And he gave the same sum to me," Valentine broke in. "You said my
property was all land, but it is not. And so, John, you will no longer
be a rich man."

"I shall be able to live just as I do at present," answered John
Mortimer, calmly turning him round to his own duty. "And you have
relatives who are decidedly poor. Then one of your sisters has married a
curate without a shilling, or any seeming chance of preferment; and your
brother, to whom you owe so much, has cramped his resources very much
for the sake of his mother's family. Of course, when I married Emily, I
insisted on repaying him the one thousand pounds he had made over to her
on her first marriage, but----"

"Giles is very fairly off," interrupted Valentine, "and some day no
doubt his wife will have a good fortune."

"I thought the old man had settled eight thousand pounds on her."

"He made a settlement on her when she was to marry me, and he signed it.
But that settlement was of no use when she married St. George."

"Had he the imprudence, then, to leave everything to chance?"

"Even so. But, John, St. George will never have a single acre of
Melcombe."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

A PRIVATE CONSULTATION.

"Remove from me the way of lying...I have chosen the way of
truth."--PSALM cxix. 29, 30.

"Why, you young rogues, you make your father blush for your appetites,"
said John Mortimer to his boys, when he saw Valentine at the head of the
table, serving out great slices of roast beef at a luncheon which was
also to be early dinner for the children.

Valentine had placed Emily at the other end of the table. "Take my
place, John," he now said laughing, "I always was a most wretched
carver."

"No, love, no," pleaded Emily to her husband in a quick low tone of
entreaty, and John, just in time to check himself in the act of rising,
turned the large dish toward him instead, and began to carve it, making
as if he had not heard Valentine's request. But Valentine having taken