Mr. Sampson rang the bell for the servant, and shouted into the passage for his sister. Eliza came running in, and at sight of John Treverton’s pale face screamed, and made as if she would have fainted. ‘Gracious, Mr. Treverton!’ she gasped, ‘I thought there were oceans between us. What in mercy’s name has happened?’ ‘Nothing alarming. I have only come to execute my marriage settlement, which I was not in a position to make till yesterday.’ ‘How dreadful for poor Mrs. Treverton to be left alone in a foreign land!’ John Treverton did not notice this speech. He dipped his pen in the ink and signed the paper, while Miss Sampson and Sophia, the housemaid, looked on wonderingly. ‘Sophia, run and get a pair of sheets aired, and get the spare room ready,’ cried Eliza, when she had affixed her signature as witness. ‘Of course you are going to stop with us, Mr. Treverton?’ ‘You are very kind. No, I must get away immediately. I have a trap waiting to take me back to the station. Oh, by-the-way, Sampson, about that money you kindly advanced to me. It must come out of the estate somehow; I suppose you can manage that?’ ‘Yes, I think I can manage that,’ answered Sampson modestly. ‘Do you want any further advance?’ ‘No, the estate belongs to my wife now. I must not tamper with it.’ ‘And what’s hers is yours of course. Well, I congratulate you with all my heart. You are the luckiest fellow I ever knew, bar none. A handsome wife, and a handsome fortune. What more can a man ask from Fate?’ ‘Not much, certainly,’ said John Treverton, ‘but I must catch the last up-train. Good-night.’ ‘Going back to the South of France?’ John Treverton did not wait to answer the question. He shook hands hastily with Eliza, and dashed out into the garden. A minute afterwards Mr. Sampson and his sister heard the crack of a whip, and the sound of wheels upon the high road. ‘Did you ever see such a volcanic individual?’ exclaimed the solicitor, folding up the deed of settlement. ‘I am afraid he is not happy,’ sighed Eliza. ‘I am afraid he is mad,’ said Tom. CHAPTER XIV. ‘YOU HAVE BUT TO SAY THE WORD.’ Mr. Smolendo was in his glory. In the words of his friends and followers he was coining money. He was a man to be cultivated and revered. A man for whom champagne suppers or dinners at Richmond were as nothing; a man for whom it was easier to lend a five-pound note than it is for the common ruck of humanity to advance half-a-crown. Flatterers fawned upon him, intimate acquaintances hung fondly upon him, reminding him pathetically that they knew him twenty years ago, when he hadn’t a sixpence, as if that knowledge of bygone adversity were a merit and a claim. A man of smaller mind might have had his mental equilibrium shaken by all this adulation. Mr. Smolendo was a man of granite, and took it for what it was worth. When people were particularly civil, he knew they wanted something from him.