"I am only prince consort," he said, with a smile. "I pretend to no actual interest in my wife's estate. I doubt, indeed, whether I should not have felt more complete happiness in our marriage if she had not been heiress to so large a fortune." At this Mr. Greenwood laughed outright. "Come, come, Mr. Hawkehurst," he exclaimed, "that really won't do. I am an old stager, you know--a man of the world;--and you mustn't ask me to believe that the idea of your wife's expectations can afford you anything but unqualified satisfaction." "You cannot believe? No, perhaps not," Valentine answered, thoughtfully. "But you do not know how nearly these expectations have lost me my wife. And even now, when she is mine by virtue of a bond that only death can loosen, it seems to me as if her wealth would make a kind of division between us. There are people who will always consider me a lucky adventurer, and look at my marriage as the result of clever scheming. I cannot advertise to the world the fact that I loved Charlotte Halliday from the first hour in which I saw her, and asked her to be my wife three days before I discovered her claim to John Haygarth's estate. A man can't go through the world with his justification pinned upon his breast. I think it will be my fate to be misjudged all my life. A twelvemonth ago I cared very little about the opinions of my fellow-men; but I want to be worthy of my wife in the esteem of mankind, as well as in the depths of my own moral consciousness." "Go and finish your honeymoon," said the lawyer, digging his client in the ribs with elephantine playfulness; "the moon must be in her first quarter, I should think. Go along with you, and leave me to tackle Mr. George Sheldon." CHAPTER IV. ONLY A DREAM. "I say, Lenoble," Captain Paget began abruptly one afternoon when his daughter and his future son-in-law were in attendance upon his sofa, "when are you and Diana to be married? There is nothing to hinder your marriage now, you know." Diana looked at the speaker with a grave countenance. "Dear papa, there can be no marriage while you are so ill," she said gently.