“You already know my views as to the position which, in my opinion, you ought to occupy as daughter-in-law to Sir Gilbert Clare of Withington Chase. That you have an undoubted claim on the old baronet I think very few people would be found to dispute, and the question we have now to consider is the most desirable mode of urging that claim upon his notice in order that the utmost possible advantage may accrue to you therefrom. As you justly remarked the other day, the probability is that Sir Gilbert was never made aware of his son’s marriage, and, consequently, cannot have the remotest suspicion that the young man left a widow to mourn his loss. Now, from all I heard of the baronet when I was in the country last week, I take him to be a hardfisted, penurious curmudgeon, who, to judge from his style of living, must be laying by several thousands a year—though, why he should care to do so, goodness only knows, seeing that he has nobody he cares about to leave his savings to—the next heir being a half-cousin with whom he has been at outs for the last thirty years. Now, it seems to me, taking into account the kind of man he is, that if you were to introduce yourself to his notice merely on the ground of being the widow of his son—who died nearly twenty years ago—and a person of whom probably he has never heard before, he might perhaps, without wholly ignoring your claim upon him, not merely satisfy his conscience, but persuade himself into the belief that he was acting a most generous part by you, if he were to allow you a paltry hundred, or, at the most, a couple of hundred pounds a year as long as he lives. But, Giovanna, my dear, it is more—much more—than that that I want to help you to secure for yourself. I want to see you in the position which would have been yours at your husband’s death had you married John Alexander Clare with his father’s full knowledge and consent. In that case you would undoubtedly have had a jointure of not less than seven or eight hundred a year, and I want us two to try whether we cannot see our way to secure something like an equivalent settlement for you, even after all this length of time.” Vanna was staring straight before her with an introspective expression in her midnight orbs. When the silence had lasted some time, she said very quietly: “You are working out some scheme in your brain, Uncle, I feel sure of it; you have something more to tell me—something to propose. Is it not so?” He considered the ash of his cigar for a moment or two, then, lifting his eyes to her face, he said: “What a pity—what a very great pity it is that your boy did not live to be here to-day!” As before, when he spoke of the loss of her child, an indescribable expression flitted across Giovanna’s face. “That is precisely what you said the other day,” she remarked, coldly. “Where is the use of referring a second time to a misfortune which happened so long ago?”