"I have taken the liberty of coming to speak to you on a private matter, sir; but----" There he stopped. "What is it?" repeated Mr. Preen. "When I was in this room to-day, sir, I heard you say that your little girls were in want of a governess." "Well?" "What I am about to say may seem nothing but presumption--but my sister is seeking just such a situation. If you--if Mrs. Preen--would only see her!" "Your sister?" returned the lawyer; with, Charles thought, chilling surprise. It damped him: made him feel sensitively small. "Oh, pray do not judge of my sister by me, sir!--I mean by the position I occupy here," cried Charles, all his prearranged speeches forgotten, and speaking straight from his wounded feelings, his full heart. "You only know me as a young man working for his daily bread, and very poor. But indeed we are gentlepeople: not only by birth and education, but in mind and habits. I was copying a deed to-day: the lease of a farm on the estate of Eagles' Nest. Do you know it, sir?" "Know what?" asked Mr. Preen. "That you were copying the deed, or the estate?" "Eagles' Nest." "I know it only from being solicitor to its owner. As my predecessor, Mr. Callard, was before me." "That estate was ours, sir. When Mr. George Atkinson came into possession of it he turned us out. It had come to my father from his sister, Mrs. Atkinson, and we lived in it for a year, never dreaming it possible that it could be wrested from us. But at the year's-end a later will came to light: my aunt had left Eagles' Nest to Mr. George Atkinson, passing my father over." Charles stopped to gather breath and firmness. The remembrance of his father, and of their subsequent misfortunes and privations, almost unnerved him. Mr. Preen listened in evident surprise. "But--was your father Major Raynor, of Eagles' Nest?" "Yes, sir." "You never mentioned it." "To what end?" returned Charles; while the stranger took a momentary glance over his shoulder at him, and then bent over his newspaper again, as though the matter and the young clerk were no concern of his. "Now that my position in life has so much altered, I would rather let people think I was born a copying-clerk, than that I was heir to Eagles' Nest." "It sounds like a romance," cried Mr. Preen. "For us it has been, and is, only too stern reality. But I do not wish to trouble you with these affairs, sir; and I should not have presumed to allude to them, but for wishing to prove to you that Alice is superior to what you might imagine her to be as my sister. She is a very excellent governess indeed, accomplished, and a thorough lady." "And you say she is in want of a situation?"