‘Then I don’t think we need talk about a marriage settlement. By the terms of your cousin’s will his estate is to be held in trust for a twelvemonth. If within that time you shall have married Miss Malcolm, the estate will pass into your possession at the end of the year. You can then make a post-nuptial settlement, on as liberal a scale as you please; but you cannot give away what you do not possess.’ ‘I see. It must be a post-nuptial settlement. Well, you may as well take my instructions at once. You can rough-draft the settlement, submit your draft to counsel, have it engrossed and ready for execution upon the day on which I pass into possession of the property.’ ‘You are in a desperate hurry,’ said Sampson, smiling at his client’s grave eagerness. ‘Life is full of desperate uncertainties. I want the welfare of the woman I love to be assured, whatever fate may be mine.’ ‘That is a generous forethought rare in lovers. However intensely they may love in the present, their love seldom takes the form of solicitude for the beloved one’s future. Hence generation after generation of penniless widows and destitute children. After me the deluge, is your lover’s motto. Well, Mr. Treverton, what do you propose to settle on your wife in this post-nuptial deed?’ ‘The entire estate, real and personal,’ answered John Treverton, quietly. Mr. Sampson dropped his cigar, and sat transfixed, an image of half-amused astonishment. ‘This bangs Banagher;’ he exclaimed, ‘you must be mad.’ ‘No, I am only reasonable,’ answered Treverton. ‘The estate was left to me nominally, to Laura Malcolm actually. What was I to the testator? A blood relation, truly, but a stranger. At the time he made that will he had never seen my face; what little he had ever heard of me must have been to my disadvantage; for my life has been one long mistake, and I have given no man reason to sing my praises. What was Laura to him? His adopted daughter, the beloved and the affectionate companion of his declining years; his faithful nurse, his disinterested slave. Whatever love he had to give must have been given to her. She had grown up by his hearth. She had sweetened and cheered his lonely life. He left his estate to me, in trust for her; so that he might keep his oath, and yet leave his wealth where his heart prompted him to bestow it. He found in me a convenient instrument for the carrying out of his wishes; and I have reason to be proud that he was not unwilling to trust me with such a charge, to give me the being he held dearest. I shall settle the whole of the estate on my wife, Sampson. I consider myself bound in honour to do so.’ Mr. Sampson looked at his client with a prolonged and searching gaze, a slow smile dawning on his somewhat stolid countenance. ‘Don’t be offended at my asking the question,’ he said. ‘Are you in debt?’ ‘I don’t owe sixpence. I have lived a somewhat Bohemian life, but I have not lived upon other people’s money.’