40+ Adventure Novels & Lost World Mysteries in One Premium Edition. Henry Rider Haggard

the table and withdrawn, an unusual thing happened.

      Ernest asked Dorothy to fill his glass with port, and when she had done so he said:

      "Uncle and Jeremy, I am going to ask you to drink a health."

      The old man looked up sharply. "What is it, Ernest, my boy?"

      As for Dorothy, she blushed a rosy red, guessing what was coming, and not knowing whether to be pleased or angry.

      "It is this, uncle--it is the health of my future wife, Dorothy."

      Then came a silence of astonishment. Mr. Cardus broke it:

      "Years ago, Ernest, my dear nephew, I told you that I wished this to come to pass; but other things happened to thwart my plans, and I never expected to see it. Now in God's good time it has come, and I drink the health with all my heart. My children, I know that I am a strange man, and my life has been devoted to a single end, which is now drawing near its final development; but I have found time in it to learn to love you both. Dorothy, my daughter, I drink your health. May the happiness that was denied to your mother fall upon your head, her share and your share too! Ernest, you have passed through many troubles, and have been preserved almost miraculously to see this day. In Dorothy you will find a reward for everything, for she is a good woman. Perhaps I shall never live to see your happiness and the children of your happiness--I do not think I shall; but may the solemn blessing I give you now rest upon your dear heads! God bless you both, my children. All peace go with you, Dorothy and Ernest!"

      "Amen!" said Jeremy, in a loud voice, and with a vague idea that he was in church. Next he got up and shook Ernest's hand so hard in his fearful grip that the latter was constrained to cry out, and lifted Dolly out of her chair like a plaything, and kissed her boisterously, knocking the orchid-bloom she wore out of her hair in the process. Then they all sat down again and beamed at one another and drank port-wine--at least the men did--and were inanely happy.

      Indeed, the only person to whom the news was not satisfactory was Mazooku.

      "Ou!" he said, with a grunt, when Jeremy communicated it to him. "So the Rosebud is going to become the Rose, and I shan't even be able to lead my father to bed now. Ou!" And from that day forward Mazooku's abstracted appearance showed that he was meditating deeply on something.

      Next morning his uncle sent for Ernest into the office. Dorothy led him in.

      "O, here you are!" said his uncle.

      "Yes, here we are, Reginald," answered Dorothy; "what is it? Shall I go away?"

      "No, don't go away. What I have to say concerns you both. Come and look at the orchids, Ernest; they are beautiful. Ah!" he went on, stammering, "I forgot you can't see them. Forgive me."

      "Never mind, uncle, I can smell them;" and they went into the blooming-house appropriated to the temperate kinds.

      At the end of this house was a little table and some iron chairs, where Mr. Cardus would sometimes come to smoke a cigarette. Here they sat down.

      "Now, young people," said Mr. Cardus, wiping his bald head, "you are going to get married. May I ask what you are going to get married on?"

      "By Jove," said Ernest, "I never thought of that! I haven't got much, except a title, a mansion with 'numerous and valuable heirlooms, and one hundred and eighty acres of deer park,'" he added laughing.

      "No, I don't suppose you have; but, luckily for you both, I am not so badly off, and I mean to do something for you. What do you think would be the proper thing? Come, Dorothy, my little housewife, what do you reckon you can live on--living here, I mean, for I suppose that you do not mean to run away and leave me alone in my old age, do you?"

      Dorothy wrinkled up her forehead as she used to as a child, and began to calculate upon her fingers. Presently she answered:

      "Three hundred a year comfortably, quietly on two."

      "What!" said Mr. Cardus, "when the babies begin to come?"

      Dorothy blushed, old gentlemen are so unpleasantly outspoken, and Ernest jumped, for the prospect of unlimited babies is alarming till one gets used to it.

      "Better make it five hundred," he said.

      "Oh," said Mr. Cardus, "that's what you think, is it? Well, I tell you what I think. I am going to allow you young people two thousand a year and to pay the housekeeping bills."

      "My dear uncle, that is far more than we want."

      "Nonsense, Ernest! it is there and to spare; and why should you not have it, instead of its piling up in the bank or in investments? There are enough of them now, I can tell you. Everything that I have touched has turned to gold; I believe it has often been the case with unfortunate men. Money! I have more than I know what to do with, and there are idiots who think that to have lots of money is to be happy."

      He paused awhile and then went on:

      "I would give you more, but you are both comparatively young, and I do not wish to encourage habits of extravagance in you. The world is full of vicissitudes, and it is impossible for anybody to know how he may be pecuniarily situated in ten years' time. But I wish you, Ernest, to keep up your rank--moderately, if you like, but still to keep it up. Life is all before you now, and whatever you choose to go in for, you shall not want money to back you. Look here, my children, I may as well tell you that when I die you will inherit nearly all I have got; I have left it to be divided equally between you, with reversion to the survivor. I drew up that will some years back, and I do not think that it is worth while altering it now."

      "Forgive me," said Ernest, "but how about Jeremy?"

      Mr. Cardus's face changed a little. He had never got over his dislike of Jeremy, though his sense of justice caused him to stifle it.

      "I have not forgotten Jeremy," he said, in a tone that indicated that he did not wish to pursue the conversation.

      Ernest and Dorothy thanked the old man for his goodness, but he would not listen, so they went off and left him to return to his letter-writing. In the passage Dorothy peeped through the glass half of the door which opened into her grandfather's room.

      There sat the old man writing, writing, his long iron-grey hair hanging all about his face. Presently he seemed to think of something, and a smile, which the contorted mouth made ghastly, spread itself over the pallid countenance. Rising, he went to the corner and extracted a long tally-stick on which notches were cut. Sitting down again, he counted the remaining notches over and over, then took a penknife and cut one out. This done, he put the stick back, and looking at the wall, began to mutter--for he was not quite dumb--and to clasp and unclasp his powerful hand. Dorothy entered the room quickly.

      "Grandfather, what are you doing?" she said sharply.

      The old man started, and his jaw dropped. Then the eyes grew dull, and his usual apathetic look stole over his face. Taking up his slate, he wrote, "Cutting out my notches."

      Dorothy asked him some further questions, but could get nothing more out of him.

      "I don't at all like the way grandfather has been going on lately," she said to Ernest. "He is always muttering and clinching his hand as though he had some one by the throat. You know he thinks that he has been serving the fiend all these years, and that his time will be up shortly, whereas, though Reginald had no cause to love him, he has been very kind to him. If it had not been for Reginald, my grandfather would have been sent to the madhouse; but because he was connected with his loss of fortune, he thinks he is the devil. He forgets how he served Reginald; you see even in madness the mind only remembers the injuries inflicted on itself, and forgets those it inflicted on others. I don't at all like his way."

      "I should think that he had better be shut up."

      "Oh, Reginald would never do it. Come, dear, let us go out."

      It was a month or so after Mr. Cardus's announcement of his pecuniary intentions that a little wedding-party stood before the altar in Kesterwick Church. It was a very small party, consisting, indeed, only of Ernest, Dorothy, Mr. Cardus, Jeremy, and a few idlers, who, seeing