"My solicitors will furnish you with all particulars of the deed I spoke of," said Sir Oswald, without noticing his nephew's appealing tones. "That deed will secure to you two hundred a year. You have a soldier's career before you, and you are young enough to redeem the past--at any rate, in the eyes of the world, if not before the sight of heaven. If you find your regiment too expensive for your altered means, I would recommend you to exchange into the line. And now, Mr. Eversleigh, I wish you good morning." "But, Sir Oswald--uncle--my dear uncle--you cannot surely cast me off thus coldly--you--" The baronet rang the bell. "The door--for Mr. Eversleigh," he said to the servant who answered his summons. The young man rose, looking at his kinsman with an incredulous gaze. He could not believe that all his hopes were utterly ruined; that he was, indeed, cast off with a pittance which to him seemed positively despicable. But there was no hope to be derived from Sir Oswald's face. A mask of stone could not have been more inflexible. "Good morning, sir," said Reginald, in accents that were tremulous with suppressed rage. He could say no more, for the servant was in attendance, and he could not humiliate himself before the man who had been wont to respect him as Sir Oswald Eversleigh's heir. He took up his hat and cane, bowed to the baronet, and left the room. Once beyond the doors of his uncle's mansion, Reginald Eversleigh abandoned himself to the rage that possessed him. "He shall repent this," he muttered. "Yes; powerful as he is, he shall repent having used his power. As if I had not suffered enough already; as if I had not been haunted perpetually by that girl's pale, reproachful face, ever since the fatal hour in which I abandoned her. But those letters; how could they have fallen into my uncle's hands? That scoundrel, Laston, must have stolen them, in revenge for his dismissal." He went to the loneliest part of the Green Park, and, stretched at full length upon a bench, abandoned himself to gloomy reflections, with his face hidden by his folded arms. For hours he lay thus, while the bleak March winds whistled loud and shrill in the leafless trees above his head--while the cold, gray light of the sunless day faded into the shadows of evening. It was past seven o'clock, and the lamps in Piccadilly shone brightly, when he rose, chilled to the bone, and walked away from the park. "And I am to consider myself rich--with my pay and fifty pounds a quarter," he muttered, with a bitter laugh; "and if I find a crack cavalry regiment too expensive, I am to exchange into the line--turn foot-soldier, and face the scornful looks of all my old acquaintances. No, no, Sir Oswald Eversleigh; you have brought me up as a gentleman, and a gentleman I will remain to the end of the chapter, let who will pay the cost. It may seem easy to cast me off, Sir Oswald; but we have not done with each other yet."