London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1888 [_The right of translation is reserved_] CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAPTER PAGE XIII. SOPHY MEREDITH 1 XIV. A TURNING POINT 22 XV. ‘BUT YOU ARE NOT A CHRISTIAN’ 43 XVI. IN LONDON 61 XVII. AN UNCONVENTIONAL GUEST 83 XVIII. AT THE ACADEMY 105 XIX. THE SHADOW OF DEATH 120 XX. MR. LINDSAY’S WILL 140 XXI. ROGUES IN COUNCIL 161 XXII. ‘TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS!’ 184 XXIII. DAVID MACGOWAN GETS INTO TROUBLE 194 XXIV. THE SIGNING OF THE WILL 208 XXV. MR. WILLIAM BEATTIE ACTS LIKE A CHRISTIAN 222 XXVI. THE RICH MAN DIED, AND WAS BURIED 235 THE LINDSAYS. CHAPTER XIII. SOPHY MEREDITH. In a garden, the garden of a large old-fashioned house on Highgate Hill, a girl sat with a book in her hand, dreaming, on a July afternoon. The scene was a thoroughly English one. Behind the garden-seat rose the gray brick walls of the house. It was old without being in the least degree venerable, ugly without looking positively mean. Its size redeemed it from that--its size, and a certain air of comfortableness that belongs only to English homes. High walls shut out the sight of the new garish houses of red brick, and the sounds from the road, which of late years had become very much like a street. Within the lofty garden walls, order, comfort, propriety were supreme--they were not likely to be replaced by any other principles so long as Sophy Meredith reigned at Grove House. The lawn exactly resembled a carpet; not a weed was to be seen in gravel-walk or in flower-bed; the rose-trees had just so much liberty as would prevent their appearing formal, not a fraction more. But the principle of order was, after all, subservient to that of comfort. Books and magazines, garden-chairs, and bits of feminine ‘work’ lay about. On one side stood an invalid’s chair. Sophy lay back on the garden-seat, her hands clasping the half-closed book on her lap. She was no longer a girl, being now seven-and-twenty; but she had one of those smooth, fair complexions which take ten years off a woman’s apparent age. Her features were not striking, but very pleasing, and suited well her slight figure and her low forehead.