"If you want to be a fool, you can tell your lover of this windfall; but if you wish to prove yourself a sensible girl, you will hold your tongue. He has saved forty pounds by hard work in the last three months, you say: do you think he would have saved forty pence if he had known that you had five thousand pounds at his disposal? I know that class of men; look at Goldsmith, the man who wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield," and "Rasselas," and "Clarissa Harlowe," and so on. I have read somewhere that he never wrote except under coercion--that is to say, want of money." Charlotte acknowledged the wisdom of this argument, and submitted. She was not what was called a strong-minded woman; and, indeed, strength of mind is not a plant indigenous to the female nature, but an exceptional growth developed by exceptional circumstances. In Charlotte's life there had been nothing exceptional, and she was in all things soft and womanly, ready to acknowledge, and to be guided by, the wisdom of her seniors. So Valentine heard nothing of the undertaking executed by his lady-love. After this, Mr. Sheldon took counsel's opinion, and set to work in real earnest to recover the estate of the deceased John Haygarth from the yawning jaws of that tame but all-devouring monster, the Crown. The work was slow, and the dry as dust details thereof need not be recorded here. It had but just begun when Horatio Paget suddenly returned from his Continental expedition, and established himself once more in the Omega Street lodgings. CHAPTER II. CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY. Captain Paget's return was made known to the Sheldon circle by a letter from the returning wanderer to his daughter. The Captain was laid up with rheumatic gout, and wrote quite piteously to implore a visit from Diana. Miss Paget, always constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her side, even to this _pere prodigue_, obeyed the summons promptly, with the full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own fussy manner. "And if you'd like to take your papa a bottle of Mr. Sheldon's old port, Diana, remember it's at your disposal. I'm sure I've heard people say that old port is good for the gout--or perhaps, by the bye, what I heard was that it _wasn't_ good. I know old port and gout seem to run together in my head somehow. But if there's anything in the house your papa would like, Diana--wine, or gunpowder tea, or the eider-down coverlet off the spare bed, or the parlour croquet, to amuse him of an evening, or a new novel--surely one couldn't forfeit one's subscription by lending a book to a non-subscribing invalid?"