"My dear Hampton, I don't know how to be sufficiently grateful. And, my dear Miss Gertrude, I cannot take this. Ten thousand pounds, and you only left with a hundred a year. Look here, Hampton. Now, no nonsense. I shall only take some of this money--half. The other I insist upon making over to Miss Gertrude here as her dowry." "Can't be done. Shan't be done," said the old lawyer gruffly. "Lawrence, we've known each other twenty years." "Yes, we have." "Then don't be a fool." "And not at his side when he died," said the doctor, nodding his head. "My dear Miss Gertrude, I feel as if I am robbing you." "You don't know how glad I am, Doctor Lawrence," cried Gertrude, laying her hands in his. "Dear uncle always liked you, and I felt sure he would leave you something handsome in his will." "Hah!" It was a long, low expiration of the breath from Saul Harrington, who was too deep in thought to hear what was going on, as, with hands down in his pockets, he gazed down fixedly at the carpet. "And if George Harrington dies, I succeed to everything. Yes," he said to himself, "I should be master here. Get out! Beast!" He said these last words aloud, for the dog was sniffing at his legs, and all the time it seemed as if the portrait of old James Harrington was the old man himself, gazing down sternly from the wall at his plotting nephew. "Yes, if he dies--if he dies--I shall be master here." CHAPTER SEVEN. READY FOR THE HEIR. "There, Miss Gertrude," said Mrs Denton, carefully pinning the white apron she had rolled up to guard against its falling open--the apron she had been wearing for a fortnight, "I don't like to boast, but I think I may say that The Mynns never looked cleaner since it was a house." "Never, Denton." "And I've had my work to do, my dear, for servants will be servants. They're paid so much a year, and they reckon how much they ought to do for the money, and when they've done that it's hard to get them to move." "Well, Denton," said Gertrude, smiling, "is it not natural?" "Natural enough, my dear, if you'll excuse me calling you so now you're a grown young lady; but we don't go by nature in service. I like to see servants take a pride in their work, and the place they're in. I do, and I always try to make the place look better when there's no one to watch me." "You're a dear, good old soul, Denton, and I hope we may never part." "Till the last, miss, and the last comes to us all as it did to poor dear master. Forty years was I with him, my dear; and it don't seem like forty weeks. Any news, my dear?" "No, Denton," said Gertrude, flushing slightly now. "Well, he might have written if he has got the news, and said when you might expect him. It isn't as if Mr Hampton hadn't telegraphed out. And it does seem so strange. Six weeks since poor master died, and no letter. You'd be glad to hear, miss, wouldn't you?" "I--I--yes--I don't know, Denton."