'You forget that this is his home,' said she, with a little touch of womanly feeling for the moment, 'or he deems it as such.' 'So long as you permit it, I suppose.' 'I cannot throw down the glove to the County just now.' 'But assume a virtue if you have it not,' said Hawkey, applying himself to the long tumbler, that still sparkled and effervesced in the lamp-light. 'He cannot harm me, at all events.' 'I don't know that, and I was deuced easier when he was away in Egypt. Some might call this selfish--what the devil do I care! A man's chief duty centres on himself.' 'Without pity for the unfortunate?' 'Don't be a humbug, Deb, and don't act to me! The poor and unfortunate are so, by their own fault, I suppose. I wish to speak with you about that to which I have--reluctantly--referred more than once.' Mrs. Lindsay made a gesture of impatience, and said, while toying with her pet cur Fifine: 'Ah--money matters with reference to yourself in the future?' 'Yes; but I do dislike, my dear Deb,' said he, with an affection which she knew right well was mostly simulated, 'discussing them with you.' 'Why?' 'It is so disagreeable.' 'It would be more disagreeable for you if there were no money matters to discuss,' she replied with the smallest approach to a sneer. 'But, to the point, Hawkey--I know what it is!' 'You are not strong, you know, dear Deb; you may go off--' (the hooks, he was about to say, but changed his mind)--'off suddenly, and not leave your house well ordered. We should always be prepared for the worst. You know what the best doctors in Edinburgh have told you,' he added, burying his nose and moustache in the tumbler again. 'Well?' said she. 'I mean that you should execute that will you spoke of.' 'In your favour?' 'And so preclude all contention from any quarter--a hundred times I have hinted this to you.' 'How kind and soothing the reminder is!' she replied bitterly, unwilling, like all selfish people, to adopt or face the dire idea of death, sudden or otherwise. 'I do advise you to consider well, Deb.' 'For your sake, of course.' 'Well--it may seem selfish, dear Deb.' 'Ah--advice is a commodity which every possessor deems most valuable, and yet hastens to get rid of.' Hawkey eyed her anxiously, for her irritation and animosity, when her delicate health and disease of the heart were referred to, always predominated over every other feeling, but she waived them for the time and returned to the first subject. 'So that was all your success with Maude?' 'Not much, certainly,' he replied, with a scowl at vacancy. 'Unfortunate!' 'Rather!' 'As the provision left by her father is a most ample one for her.' 'Not so ample as all Earlshaugh, however,' thought he, refilling his briar-root in silence. 'You must persevere. It has been truly said that "the days of Jacob are over, that men don't understand waiting now, and it is always as well to catch your fish when you can."'