Alice, with her sweet face, her slight figure, and her quite perceptible limp, came across the grass. "May I not be admitted to the conference?" she asked pleadingly. "I know you are talking of Robert." "Oh, my dear, it is nothing that you need trouble yourself about," said her mother, soothingly. "Go back to your tatting." "I have my tatting with me. Mamma--Oscar--do you not see that it will be _well_ for me to hear what there is to hear. I know something is wrong about Robert; I could not sleep all last night, no, nor the night before, for dwelling on it. Whatever there is to hear, it cannot make me more anxious than I am--and it would end this suspense." "Well, well, sit down," said Mrs. Dalrymple, giving way. "I hardly know myself how much or how little of evil there is to hear, Alice." And she went on to speak without reservation: "Robert had fallen into gambling habits; and there was no telling how deeply. All his own means were undoubtedly gone. Of course things must get worse night by night," she concluded. "Any night he may stake the Grange." "Stake the Grange!" echoed Alice. "Mamma, what do you mean?" "Stake it and lose it," confirmed Oscar. "When the mania for play sets in on a man, he is not content to confine his ventures to trifles." "But I do not understand," returned Alice. "How could he stake the Grange? It is in the Dalrymple family, and cannot go out of it?" "He might stake its value. Mortgage it, that is, for his own life." "And could we not remain in it?" she quickly asked. "Scarcely. It might take every shilling of its incomings to pay off the interest. You could not remain here upon nothing." "Would it be sacrificed; useless to us for so long as Robert lived?" questioned Selina, not quite comprehending. Oscar nodded. "I am only saying that he might do it: I do not say he will. He might so hamper himself, so involve the estate, that he could never derive further benefit from it. Or his family either, so long as he lived." "Does it return to us at Robert's death? I wish to goodness he would be more careful of himself," added Selina, in her quick way. "Sitting up till daylight, night after night, cannot be good for him." "It--would return into the family," spoke Oscar, hesitatingly. Alice Dalrymple looked up from a reverie. A contingency had occurred to her which she had never thought of before: so entirely had the Grange been theirs in their father's recent lifetime, and in the certainty of its descending to Robert afterwards. "Suppose anything were to happen to Robert," she said, "whose would the Grange be? Mamma's?" No one answered her. "Oscar, I ask you, would it go to mamma?" "No." "To whom, then?" "My dear," interposed Mrs. Dalrymple, "it would be Oscar's. It goes in the male line." The answer took both the young ladies by surprise. They were really very ignorant of these matters. Each of them stole a glance at Oscar: a red, conscious light had flown into his usually pale cheek.