Upon Edward Langton a very different effect was produced; while Winifred’s heart sank in her bosom, his rose with a boundless exhilaration and hope. What he saw before him was something so entirely unhoped for, so unthought of, that it was no wonder if it turned his head, as the vulgar say. Mr. Chester, who had acquired the property of his ancestors in their moment of need, unrighteously as he believed, trading upon their necessities, seemed to him now, with all the force of a dead hand, to thrust compensation upon him. It was not to Winifred but to him that the fortune seemed to be given. That this was the reverse of the testator’s intention, that he had meant something totally different, did not affect Langton’s mind. It gave him even an additional grim satisfaction, as the jewels of gold and of silver borrowed from his Egyptian master might have satisfied the mind of a fierce Hebrew, defrauded for a lifetime of the recompense of his toil. The millionaire’s plunder, his gain which had been extracted from the sweat of other men, was to return into the hands of one of the families at least of which he had taken advantage. For once the revenges of time were fully just and satisfactory. He went about his parish work and visited his poor patients with this elation in his mind, instinctively making notes as to things which he would have done and improvements made. Mr. Chester, who had the practical instincts of a man whose first thought has always been to make money, had, indeed, done a great deal for the estate; but he had spent nothing, neither thought nor money, upon the condition of the poor, for whom he cared much less than for their cattle. Langton’s interests were strong in the other way. He thought of sanitary miracles to be performed, of disease to be extirpated, of wholesome houses and wholesome faces in the little clusters of human habitation that were dotted here and there round the enclosure of the park. Different minds take their pleasures in different ways. He was not dull to the delights of a well-preserved cover; but with a more lively impulse he anticipated a grand battue of smells and miasmas, draining of stagnant ponds, and destruction to the agues and fevers which haunted the surrounding country. This idea blended with the intense subdued pleasure of anticipation with which he thought of the estate returning to the old name, and himself to the house of his fathers: there was nothing ignoble in the elation that filled his mind. Perhaps, according to the sentiment of romance, it would have been a more lofty position had he endured tortures from the idea of owing this elevation to his marriage; or even had he refused, at the cost of her happiness and his own, to accept so much from his wife; but Langton was of a robust kind, and not easily affected by those prejudices, which after all are not very respectful to women. He would have married Winifred with nothing. Why should he withdraw from her when she had