"I was going down to Cheltenham with Annis and Marcus, and our train came to grief near Reading; the passengers had to get out whilst the damage, something to an axle, was tinkered up. Francis Grubb was coming up from the Acorns' place in Oxfordshire: it was during the time he was making love to Adela, and the accident to my train stopped his. I was sitting by the wayside disconsolately enough on my little wooden bonnet-box, when one of the nicest-looking and grandest men, for a young man, I ever saw, came up and politely asked if he could be of any service to me. My heart, so to say, went out to him at once, his manner was so winning, his countenance so good and noble. Something in his eyes struck me as familiar--you know how beautiful they are--when in another moment my own eyes fell on the name on his hand-bag, 'C. Grubb.' Then I remembered the eyes; they were Catherine's; and I knew that I saw before me her son and my heir." "And your silent prejudice against him ceased from that time," laughed the Rector. "Entirely. I have learnt to love him, to be proud of him. Catherine cannot feel more pride in her son than I feel in him. But I have never given him the slightest hint that he will inherit Court Netherleigh. Not that I have never felt tempted to do so. When Adela has jeered at his name, in her contemptuous way, it has been on the tip of my tongue more than once to say to her: He will bear a better sometime. And I have told himself once--or twice--that he was quite safe in letting Acorn borrow money on Court Netherleigh. He is safe, you see, seeing that it is he himself who will come into it: though, of course, he took it to mean that Acorn would do so." Mr. Cleveland drew a long breath. These matters had surprised him, but in his heart of hearts he felt thankful that the rich demesnes would become Francis Grubb's and not thriftless George Acorn's. "Never a word of this abroad until I am gone, my old friend," she enjoined, "not even to your wife; you understand that?" "I understand it perfectly, dear Miss Upton, and will observe it." "You will not have long to wait." CHAPTER XXXI. IN THE OLD CHÂTEAU. A draughty old château in Switzerland. Not that it need have been draughty, for it lay at the foot of a mountain, sheltered from the east winds. But the doors did not fit, and the windows rattled, after the custom of most old châteaux: and so the winter air crept in. It stood in a secluded spot quite out of the beaten tracks of travellers; and it looked upon one of the most glorious prospects that even this favoured land of lovely scenery can boast.