"I wish you'd mind what one says," cried the impatient little invalid. "I told you I didn't know quite all it means, neither could you if you was to try. Mamma, ring the bell and send for Scarsdale--he's got no master now but you and me; send and tell him I want him, and he's to come directly. Mamma, do you hear?" And when Mrs. Stenhouse had glanced over the letter, which she did understand rather better than Edmund after all, she thought the boy's suggestion wise. She had not the smallest gleam of discrimination in respect to character, and to be Colonel Sutherland's nephew was enough to give her a blind confidence in Horace; and as to the possibility of acting for herself, that did not enter into the poor woman's head. She sent for Scarsdale accordingly, not in little Edmund's imperative mood, but with a pleading message that Mr. Scarsdale would be so _very_ good as to come to her as soon as it was _quite_ convenient for him, as she was so anxious to consult him about a letter she had received. Her heart beat higher in her breast that day with a deeper individual throb than it had known for many a previous year; a little flutter of tumultuous independence was in her mind; she would receive Roger into her own house unreproved; she seemed on the very eve of finding out something which might be of service to that cherished but unknown son; and her whole nature was stimulated by these unaccustomed hopes. CHAPTER XI. In Mr. Stenhouse's office, where affairs were being wound up, Horace Scarsdale held his clerk's place in greater personal discomfiture than he had ever previously known. Mr. Stenhouse's executors knew of nothing extraordinary in the position of this young man. His mysterious prospects were totally unknown to them, and he had no secret to hold over _their_ heads and enforce his claims withal. To them he was only the newest and least acquainted of the lawyer's clerks, and nobody cared for his black looks and assumptions of superiority. He remained reluctantly at his desk, because he could not afford, in present circumstances, to sacrifice the salary which would shortly be paid to him, nor could he make up his mind, in spite of all the dark excitements which distracted him--the fascination of enmity and evil purpose which bound him to Marchmain, and the covetous and tyrannous impulse which placed so plainly before his eyes his power over Mr. Pouncet--to leave the place which contained Amelia, and where alone he had any likelihood of seeing her. After their last interview the lover was daring enough to have stood upon small punctilio at the next meeting. But Mrs. Stenhouse's door was still decorously closed, and Stevens, at the present moment much more disposed to take Master Edmund for the tyrant of the house than Miss Amelia, was inexorable, and gave no admission. Mrs. Stenhouse's message accordingly found the young man in a propitious mood. He made haste to obey it, extremely indifferent as to the subject