"Yes, May; you have assured me so. But you are not yet nineteen; and I--alas!--was nineteen more than nineteen years ago. It struck me that Mr. Rivers was desirous that you should take your full share of responsibility in the matter. And he seemed a little anxious about his place. At all events he brought forward the salary he is earning with Mr. Bragg as an important element in the financial budget with which he favoured me. (How the man could think for a moment that your family would consent!) I gathered that he was decidedly unwilling to lose it." "He only took it for my sake." "Ah! That was particularly kind of him. Well, it strikes me that he would now like to keep it for his own. Of course I must write to your father. I presume you will admit that it is proper to inform him of the state of the case?" "You can write if you choose, Aunt Pauline. It will make no difference, _now_." "I think you will find it will make a considerable difference! Circumstances have entirely altered your father's position in the world. You will be daughter and heiress to a peer of the realm." There was a long pause. May stood with one foot on the fender before a bright fire in her aunt's dressing-room, her elbow on the mantel-shelf, and her cheek resting in her hand. Then Mrs. Dormer-Smith resumed softly, "Perhaps I deceive myself--the wish may be father to the thought--but I confess I got the impression that it might not be hopeless to induce Mr. Rivers to withdraw, voluntarily, from his false position. Of course he could do no less than stand to it so long as you appeared resolved to stand to it; but----I hope and trust, May, that if it should be as I think, you would not insist on being obstinate?" "You know, as well as I know it myself, Aunt Pauline, that I would die sooner than hold him bound for one instant, unless----But I won't answer you as if I took your words seriously." Upon that she managed to walk out of the room with dignity and dry eyes. But the poor child, for all her brave words, did take her aunt's hint so seriously as to throw herself on the bed in her own room, and lie sobbing there for an hour. To her husband, Mrs. Dormer-Smith had reported the interview with Owen as accurately as she could. She did, indeed, declare her belief that the young man was a Nihilist. But that was said genuinely enough. A man of gentle birth, who deliberately stated--apparently with sympathetic approval--that there were mechanics who would be ashamed to own Captain Cheffington as a father-in-law, was, in her opinion, evidently prepared to demolish the existing bases of human society.