A few days later the conjecture acquired still more force through a letter from Mr. Angelo, informing him that the will case of which he had spoken had been decided out of court, and that Mrs. Lauriston was entitled to an income of four thousand a year, and a house in Queen’s Gate which she could let or occupy at her discretion. The property was, by the late Captain Weston’s bequest, to be hers on her majority or on her marriage, whichever event should take place first; therefore if Mr. and Mrs. Lauriston would call at their office at an early date, Messrs. Smith and Angelo would put them in possession of all further details, and be able to complete certain necessary formalities. These formalities, however, turned out to be very few and very simple, and George was surprised at the ease with which such a young woman as Nouna could enter into possession of so considerable an income. As for her, she was crazy with delight, and on learning that she could have an advance to furnish her house and make in it what alterations she liked, she awoke into a new life of joyful activity which seemed almost to suggest some superhuman agency in enabling her to be in half a dozen places at once. When at last, after having shown in the arrangement of her handsome home some of the skill of an artist, and herself superintended the work of the most intelligent artisans a distinguished firm in Bond Street could furnish, Nouna introduced her husband in triumph to the little palace on the south of the park, poor George was overwhelmed by a crowd of bitter and sorrowful feelings to which Nouna’s half-childish, half-queenly delight in the change from the home of his creating to the home of hers gave scarcely anything more than an added pang. What could he hope to be to her now but a modest consort half ignored amidst the pretty state with which she evidently meant to surround herself? What sense of authority over her, of liberty for himself, could he hope to have, when, instead of her sharing his prospects, he was simply sharing hers? Since she could so lightly part, with no sensation stronger than relief, from those associations with their first days of wedded love which he held so dear, what hold could he really have on her heart at all? And suddenly, in the midst of his grave reflections, Nouna herself, to-day clothed in a whirlwind, shattering or fluttering every object and every creature she came near, would fly at him down some corridor, or through some curtain, like an incarnate spirit of joyous triumph, and force him, with or without his will, to rejoice with her in her work. But with a laugh, and a rush of light words and a tempestuous caress, she would leave him again, it being out of the question that a man’s sober feet could carry him from attic to cellar with as much swiftness as she felt the occasion required of her, the new mistress. So George made his tour of inspection for the most part by himself, civilly declining