WALDO’S was a business letter; any feelings that might be influencing the proposed transaction, any sentiment that might be involved—whether of Nina’s, of his own, of his father’s, or of mine—he appeared to consider as having been adequately indicated in our talk at Paris, and accorded them only one passing reference. He assumed that I should be bearing all that—he had a habit of describing the emotions as “all that,” I remembered—in mind; what remained was to ask me whether I were favorably disposed to the arrangement, the value of his remainder—which must, alas, before many years were out, become an estate in possession—to be fixed by a firm of land agents selected by himself and me—“from which price I should suggest deducting twenty-five per cent. in consideration of what I believe the lawyers call ‘natural love and affection’; in other words, because I’d much sooner sell to you than to a stranger—in fact, than to _anybody else_.” The underlining of the last two words clearly asked me to substitute for them a proper name with which we were both well acquainted. He added that he thought the land agents’ valuation would be somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty thousand pounds, timber included—and so, with kindest remembrances from Nina, who was splendidly fit, _considering_ (another underlining gave me news of possible importance for the future of the Dundrannan barony), he remained my affectionate cousin. Though I suspect that son and father, at the bottom of their hearts, felt much the same about the matter, Sir Paget’s letter was expressed in a different vein. Leaving the business to Waldo, he dealt with the personal aspect: “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you that I hadn’t always hoped and expected that the heir of my body and the child of my dear wife should succeed me here. That’s nature; but _Dis aliter visum_. The All-Highest herself decides otherwise.” (I saw in my mind the humorous, rather tired, smile with which he wrote that.) “But I should be an ungrateful churl indeed if I repined at the prospect of being succeeded at Cragsfoot by you, who bear the old name (and, I am told, are to get a handle to it!)—you who are and have been always son of my heart, if not of my body—a loyal, true son too, if you will let me say it. So, if it is to be, I receive it with happiness, and the more you come to your future dominions while I—_brevis dominus_—am still here to welcome you, the better I shall be pleased. But, prithee, Julius, remember that you provide, in your own person, only for the next generation. When your turn comes for the doleful cypresses, what is to happen? You must look to it, my boy!”