Through some official at the Court of Probate, I fancy that Mr. Worboise had heard of a caveat having been entered with reference to the will of Mr. Richard Boxall, deceased. I do not know that this was the case, but I think something must have occurred to irritate him against those whom he, with the law on his side, was so sorely tempted to wrong. I know that the very contemplation of wrong is sufficient to irritate, and that very grievously, against one thus contemplated; but Lucy would have been a very good match, though not equal to Miss Hubbard, even in Mr. Worboise's eyes. On the other hand, however, if he could but make up, not his mind, but his conscience, to take Boxall's money, he would be so much the more likely to secure Miss Hubbard's; which, together with what he could leave him, would make a fortune over two hundred thousand--sufficient to make his son somebody. If Thomas had only spoken in time, that is, while his father's conscience still spoke, and before he had cast eyes of ambition toward Sir Jonathan's bankers! All that was wanted on the devil's side now was some personal quarrel with the rightful heirs; and if Mr. Worboise did not secure that by means of Mr. Sargent's caveat, he must have got it from what had happened on the Monday morning. Before Thomas came down to breakfast, the postman had delivered a letter addressed to him, with the Hastings postmark upon it. When Thomas entered, and had taken his seat, on the heels of the usual cool _Good-morning_, his father tossed the letter to him across the table, saying, more carelessly than he felt: "Who's your Hastings correspondent, Tom?" The question, coming with the sight of Lucy's handwriting, made the eloquent blood surge into Tom's face. His father was not in the way of missing anything that there was to see, and he saw Tom's face. "A friend of mine," stammered Tom. "Gone down for a holiday." "One of your fellow-clerks?" asked his father, with a dry significance that indicated the possible neighborhood of annoyance, or worse. "I thought the writing of doubtful gender." For Lucy's writing was not in the style of a field of corn in a hurricane: it had a few mistakable curves about it, though to the experienced eye it was nothing the less feminine that it did not affect feminity. "No," faltered Tom, "he's not a clerk; he's a--well, he's a--teacher of music." "Hm!" remarked Mr. Worboise. "How did you come to make his acquaintance, Tom?" And he looked at his son with awful eyes, lighted from behind with growing suspicion.