mine
."
"I've got Tangle's opinion here," answered Tom; "I won't ask you to look at it, uncle. He's dead against us. Just what you said six months back. There's no getting over that trust-deed, nor through it, nor round it, nor any way to the other side of it. I've done my d----dest, and we're not a bit better off than when we began."
He spoke in a cheerful, almost an exulting tone, quite unlike a man worsted in a hard and protracted struggle.
"I'm sorry for the young lady," observed Bargrave; "but I never expected anything else. It's a fine estate, and it must go to the male heir. She has but a small settlement, Tom, very inadequate to her position, as I told poor Mr. Bruce many a time. He used to say everything would be set right by his will, and now one of these girls is left penniless, and the other with a pittance, a mere pittance, brought up, as I make no doubt she was, to believe herself an heiress."
"One of them!" exclaimed Tom. "What do you mean?"
"Why, that poor thing who was born a few weeks too soon," answered Bargrave. "She's totally unprovided for. With regard to Miss Bruce, there is a settlement. Two hundred a year, Tom, for life; nothing more. I told you so when you undertook the job. And now who's to pay your costs?"
"Not you, uncle," answered Tom flippantly, "so don't distress yourself on that score."
"I don't, indeed," observed Bargrave, with emphasis.
"You've had your own time to work this, on the understanding, as you know, that it was to be worked at your own risk. I haven't interfered; it was no affair of mine. But your costs will be heavy, Tom, I can't help seeing that. Tangle's opinion don't come so cheap, you see, though it's word for word the same as mine. I would have let you have it for nothing, and anybody else for six and eightpence."