"Mother, sister, and brother, all the family are dead," replied Mr Blundell, "excepting her father, who, I am sorry to say, is still alive to everything but a proper sense of his own respectability and his child's happiness. His last instructions were dated London, but what he is doing there, or where, or how he lives, I cannot tell." He had now forgotten my misdemeanours in his own confidential regrets, and I had forgotten my confusion in eagerness to know something more of one who, I felt, for all the careful old gentleman's prudent veto, was not yet quite out of my reach; although the mention of her fortune, while it made the prize (why should I be ashamed to confess it?) much more seriously valuable, had inspired me with a fear of failure proportionate to the enhanced advantages of success. "What a pity, sir," I said, going cunningly to work, "that testators do not attend more to the interests of their legatees in the appointment of equally careful guardians, if they think one not enough." "Ah, it was the doing of the law, not of her grandfather, else Fane would never have had the control of a penny of it; but had it not been for me, he would have had it all. I fought her battle stoutly though, and kept matters square enough till I was induced to consent to the admission of this other worthy, as a sort of balance-wheel to keep our ill-sorted motions from bringing everything to a stand." "And pray, sir," I went on, elated with my success, "who may this vexatious umpire be?" I fairly overshot the mark. "That's no affair of yours, Harry, just now. Go on with your profession, get half-a-dozen years over your head, and a decent independence at least in your pocket, and then I shall be very happy indeed to put the son of an old friend in the way of a good match; but never, Harry, never let your wife have to say that _she_ made a man of you, while you have head and hands and health to make a man of _yourself_." "Dear sir, you are quite right; and believe me, I would never dream of acting otherwise--only--had I not better see about Miss Fane's _hortus siccus_, as you say she goes to-day?" "I have saved you that trouble, Harry: she is gone before you were out of bed."