“Oh, I will advise her,” said Mr. Rushton, lightly, “though I think perhaps my wife would do it better. Fortune-hunters, yes, there are always fortune-hunters after an heiress. Your best plan would be to choose some one for her yourself, and get her married off in your lifetime, Trevor. Lucy is a good girl, and would content herself with her father’s choice.” “Do you think so?” said the old man, with a gleam of pleasure; “but, no, no,” he added, “I am not in the same world that Lucy will be in. I couldn’t choose for her; and besides she’s only seventeen, and I’m not long for this world.” “Seventeen is not too young to be married; and you’re hale and hearty, my old friend,” said his visitor, once more slapping him on the shoulder. This demonstration of friendliness was almost too much for old Trevor, standing up feebly on his trembling old legs in honor of this distinguished acquaintance. He shook his head, but the voice was shaken out of him, and he was not capable of any further reply. When, however, Mr. Rushton encountered Ford outside at the gateway of the Terrace he took a much less jovial tone. “I hope he has got everything signed and sealed,” he said, “and all his affairs in order: these papers he is always pottering over--codicils, I suppose--you should get them signed, too, and made an end of. He is not long for this world, as he himself says.” “I don’t see much difference,” said Ford, with that eagerness, half sorrow for the impending event, half impatience to have it over, which even the most affectionate of friends often feel in spite of themselves, in respect to a long anticipated, often retarded ending. “But then I see him every day. Do you really think--” “You should see that everything is settled and in order,” said the lawyer, as he walked away. CHAPTER XII. FATHER AND DAUGHTER. “And so Christopher went away to look for the great strong man that King Maximus was afraid of; but I forgot, his name was not Christopher then, but only Offero, a heathen; you know what a heathen is, Jock?” “I should think I did know; but go on, go on with the story, I never read this in any book.” “Well! Then Christopher wandered about everywhere over all the country, asking for the strange man. He did not know whether it was a giant like himself, or a king like Maximus, or what it was; but he went over the seas and up among the hills and into all the towns, looking for him.” “That is far too like a fairy tale for a Sunday,” said Mrs. Ford sitting behind in her big arm-chair. “My dear, if he had gone to the chief people in the country, the ways of the towns, or the authorities, they would soon have told him--that is, if he knew his name; and even in a fairy tale few people are so stupid as to set out in search of any one without knowing his name.”