“But you like the news, don’t you?” said Jack, turning suddenly on her.
“Like it! how could I fail? Such a good girl, and all that money, and your uncle wishing it so much. Nothing could be so desirable, only, my dear boy—”
“What?” sharply.
“Sometimes you get odd touches of perversity, and the very fact of a thing being quite unexceptional sets you against it. I remember it so well when you were a boy. It would have been a sad misfortune in this case, though, of course, it is too momentous a matter for me to have said much about it beforehand. I suppose that is the reason you did not know how anxious I felt, but I assure you I have scarcely thought of anything else. And Phillis is at Bologna! When do they come on?”
“To-morrow—Saturday. I don’t exactly remember. I suppose you know the terms of the agreement?” said Jack, looking at her.
“My dear!”
“Well, it is an agreement,” he said perversely; “what else would you call it? I, Peter Thornton, of Hetherton Grange, in the county of Surrey, Esquire, do hereby declare you, John Francis Ibbetson, barrister—how shall I put the London lodgings, second floor, to best advantage?—to be the heir of all my estates and properties—excluding, let us hope, his gout and his temper—on condition that you take as your wife my step-niece, Mary Phillis Grey, to have and to hold with the timber, freeholds, messuages, and other etceteras of the said estate. If that is not an agreement, I don’t know the meaning of the word.”
Miss Cartwright, leaning forward, tried to look into her nephew’s face.
“My dear,” she said slowly, “of course you are in joke, but I don’t think I like to hear you talk in such a way. I should be miserable if I did not feel sure you were quite happy.”
Jack turned round and took her soft hand very kindly in his own.