"Yes, of course. When poor Wimbledon looked as healthy and as strong as I do at this moment, about it--a long time ago. Poor Wimbledon!--he fancied, I suppose, I had some little turn, about it, for business--_some_ of my friends _do_--and I accepted the trust when poor Wimbledon looked as little likely to be hurried into eternity, about it, as I do. I had a regard for him, poor Wimbledon, and he had a respect for me, and thought I could be of use to him after he was dead, and I have endeavoured, and people think I _have_. But Lady Wimbledon, the dowager, poor woman! She's very long-winded, poor soul, and gives me an infinity of trouble. One can't say to a lady, 'You are detaining me; you are wandering from the subject; you fail to come to the point.' It would be taking a liberty, or something, about it. I had not seen Lady Wimbledon, simple 'oman, for seven years or more. It's a very entangled business, and I confess it seems rather unfair, that I should have my time, already sufficiently occupied with other, as I think, more important affairs, so seriously interrupted and abridged. There's going to be a bill filed--yes, and a great deal of annoyance. She has one unmarried daughter, Caroline, about it, who is not to have any power over her money until she is thirty-one. She's not that now. It was hardly fair to me, putting it in trust so long. She is a very superior person--a young woman one does not meet with every day, about it; and--and very apprehensive--a great deal of mind--quite unusual. Do you know her?" The viscount raised his eyes toward the ceiling with a smile that was mysterious and pleased. Cleve did know that young lady of eight-and-twenty, and her dowager mamma, "simple 'oman," who had pursued him with extraordinary spirit and tenacity for several years, but that was past and over. Cleve experienced a thrill of pain at his heart. He suspected that the old torturing idea was again active in his uncle's mind. Yes, he _did_ know them--ridiculous old woman; and the girl--he believed she'd marry any one; he fancied she would have done _him_ that honour at one time, and he fancied that the trust, if it was to end when she was thirty-one, could not be very long in force. "My dear Cleve, don't you think that's rather an odd way of speaking of a young lady? People used not in my time--that is, when I was a young man of two or three-and-twenty, about it--to talk so of young ladies. It was not considered a thing that ought to be done. I--I never heard a word of the kind." Lord Verney's chivalry had actually called a little pink flush to his old cheeks, and he looked very seriously still at the cornice, and tapped a little nervous tattoo with his pencil-case on the table as he did so. "I really did not mean--I only meant--in fact, uncle, I tell _you_ everything; and poor Caroline is _so_ much older than I, it always struck me as amusing."