"Well, I am heartily glad, Roper. It always has been a source of annoyance to me that I was not able to do more for you when we have been such friends together."
"That is all right, sir. We were friends together for a time, but I was in my right position and you were not. That, of course, was soon put right, and we have stood ever since in the proper relation towards each other. I am only too glad to work for you, and now you have put me in for a very good thing. If I were to go home now, everyone would say that I had done mightily well for myself, and I should go in for farming again; I made a mistake in leaving it.
"Well, when we get home, Roper, I will see that you have the first farm that is vacant on my estate."
"Why, I did not know that you had an estate!" Roper said in surprise.
"Yes, I have an estate, and, I believe, a pretty good one; but I am not to come into it till I am five-and-twenty. I think my father saw that I was a harum-scarum sort of chap, so he settled it in that way. But though I am not to come in for it till I am twenty-five, I have an uncle who manages it for me, and I can certainly persuade him to give you the first farm that is vacant. I had intended to do so before, but I thought there might be some difficulty about it, because you would require capital to work it, but this five hundred pounds would give you a fair start on a small farm."
"That would be splendid, sir! That will give me something to look forward to. As long as you stay out here I shall stay with you, if it were for another ten years; but it makes all the difference having something to look forward to afterwards, for I have wondered sometimes what on earth I should do when I went back again, I should feel so strange. I have thought, too, sometimes, about you, and what you would do when this affair had come to an end. Well, I am as glad to know that you will be all right as I am about myself."
Arthur went upstairs. As he entered the room Mercedes got up from her brother's bedside and went out.
"I am a little upset, Arthur," Leon said.
"Are you? What is the matter? you are not feeling worse, I hope?"
"No; it is nothing about myself, it is about Mercedes. You know that three months ago she was betrothed--not formally, you know, but the matter was arranged--to Count Silvio de Mora. It was a suitable match in all respects. He was some fourteen years older than Mercedes, and a worthy cavalier. Of course he asked her hand of me, and I gave my consent, and she offered no more objection than a well-brought-up maiden should do. Now she turns round and tells me that she has resolved not to marry; that after being so near to death and saved as by a miracle, she is resolved to live single. She does not wish to enter a convent or anything of that sort, but at any rate to live single for some years--in fact until I marry, and then she will probably go into a religious house.