Russel Overshute looked rather queer at this, and so did Mrs. Fermitage; but the Squire continued in the same sort of way--"What odds about her name, if it only is my Grace?" "Exactly so," replied Hardenow; "that natural feeling of yours perhaps has been foreseen and counted on; and that may be why such trouble was taken to terrify you with the idea of her death. Also, of course, that would paralyze your search, while the villains are at leisure to complete their work." "I declare, I never thought of that," cried Russel. "How extremely thick-headed of me! That theory accounts for a number of things that cannot be otherwise explained. What a head you have got, my dear Tom, to be sure!" "I wish I could believe it!" Mr. Oglander exclaimed, whilst his sister clasped her fair fat hands, and looked with amazement at every one. "But I see no motive, no motive whatever. My Grace was a dear good girl, as everybody knows, and a fortune in herself; but of worldly goods she had very little, any more than I have; and her prospects were naturally contingent--contingent upon many things, which may not come to pass, I hope, for many years--if they ever do." Here he looked at his sister, and she said, "I hope so." "Therefore," continued Mr. Oglander, "while there are so many fine girls in the county, very much better worth carrying off--so far as mere worthless pelf is concerned--why should anybody steal my Grace unless they stole her for her own sake?" Here the Squire sat down, and took to drumming with his stick. His feelings were hurt at the idea--though it was so entirely of his own origination--that his daughter had been carried off for the sake of her money, not of her own dear self. Hardenow looked at him and made no answer. He felt that it did not behove a mere stranger to ask about the young lady's expectations; while Overshute was more imperatively silenced by his relations towards the family. But Mrs. Fermitage came to the rescue. Great was her faith in the value of money, and she liked to have it known that she had plenty. "Tut, tut," she cried, shaking out her new brocaded silk--a mourning dress certainly, but softly trimmed with purple--"why should we make any mystery of things, when the truth is most important? And the truth is, Mr. Hardenow, that my dear niece had very good expectations. My deeply lamented husband, respected, and I may say reverenced, for upwards of half a century, in every college of Oxford, and even more so by the corporation, for the pure integrity of his character, the loftiness of his principles, and--and the substance of his--what they make the wine of--he was not the man, Mr. Hardenow, to leave a devoted wife behind him, who had stepped perhaps out of her rank a little, not being of commercial birth, you know, but never found cause to regret it, without some provision for the earthly time which she, being many years his junior----"