Sir Godfrey Carmichael would be made Baron Cheriton in the days to come, when he, the first Baron, should be laid in the newly built vault in the cemetery outside Dorchester. He was not going to sever himself from his kindred in that last sleep, albeit they were common folk. He would lie under the Egyptian sarcophagus which he had set up in honour of his father, the crockery dealer, and his mother, the busy, anxious house-wife. The sarcophagus was plain and unpretentious, hardly too good for the shopkeeper; yet with a certain solid dignity which was not unbefitting the law-lord, almost as massive as that mammoth cross which marks the resting-place of Henry Brougham in the fair southern land. He had chosen the monument with uttermost care, so that it might serve the double purpose. He had looked at the broad blank panel many a time, wondering how his own name would look upon it, and whether his daughter would have a laurel wreath sculptured above it. It might be that admiring friends would suggest his being laid in the Abbey, hard by those shabby disused courts where he had pleaded and sat in judgment through so many laborious years; and it might be that the suggestion would be accepted by Dean and Chapter, and that the panel on the Dorchester sarcophagus would remain blank. James Dalbrook knew that he had deserved well of posterity, and, above all, of the ruling powers. He had been staunch and unwavering in his adherence to his own party, and he knew that he had a strong claim upon any Conservative Ministry. He had sounded those in authority, and he had been assured that there would be very little difficulty in getting Sir Godfrey Carmichael a peerage by-and-by, when he, Lord Cheriton, should be no more. Sir Godfrey’s family was one of the oldest in the country, and he had but to deserve well of his party, when he had got his seat, to insure future favours. As the owner of the Cheriton and Milbrook estates, he would be a worthy candidate for one of those coronets which seem to be dealt round so freely by expiring Ministries, as it were a dying father dividing his treasures among his weeping children. So far as any man can think with satisfaction of the days when he shall be no more—and when this world will go on, badly, of course, but somehow, without him—Lord Cheriton thought of those far-off years when Godfrey Carmichael should be owner of Cheriton Chase. The young man had shown such fine qualities of heart and mind, and, above all, had given such unobtrusive evidence of his affection for Juanita’s father, that the elder man must needs give measure for measure; therefore Godfrey had been to Lord Cheriton almost as a son. The union of his humbly born daughter with one of the oldest families in the south of England gratified the pride of the self-made man. His own pedigree might be of the lowliest; but his grandson would be able to look back upon a long line of ancestors, glorified by many a patrician alliance.