"Bachelor's children may be in that predicament, certainly; but I should think few others. I never yet studied a child, that I did not find some resemblance to both parents; covert and only transitory, perhaps; but a likeness so distinct as to establish the relationship. What an accursed chance it is, that our noble young lieutenant should have no claim on this old baronet; while this d——d nullus is both heir at law, and heir of entail! I never took half as much interest in any other man's estate, as I take in the succession to this of our poor host!"
"There you are mistaken, Oakes; you took more in mine; for, when I made a will in your own favour, and gave it to you to read, you tore it in two, and threw it overboard, with your own hand."
"Ay, that was an act of lawful authority. As your superior, I countermanded that will! I hope you've made another, and given your money, as I told you, to your cousin, the Viscount."
"I did, but that will has shared the fate of the first. It appearing to me, that we are touching on serious times, and Bluewater being rich already, I destroyed the devise in his favour, and made a new one, this very morning. As you are my executor, as usual, it may be well to let you know it."
"Dick, you have not been mad enough to cut off the head of your own family—your own flesh and blood, as it might be—to leave the few thousands you own, to this mad adventurer in Scotland!"
Bluewater smiled at this evidence of the familiarity of his friend with his own way of thinking and feeling; and, for a single instant, he regretted that he had not put his first intention in force, in order that the conformity of views might have been still more perfect; but, putting a hand in his pocket he drew out the document itself, and leaning forward, gave it carelessly to Sir Gervaise.
"There is the will; and by looking it over, you will know what I've done," he said. "I wish you would keep it; for, if 'misery makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows,' revolutions reduce us, often, to strange plights, and the paper will be safer with you than with me. Of course, you will keep my secret, until the proper time to reveal it shall arrive."
The vice-admiral, who knew that he had no direct interest in his friend's disposition of his property, took the will, with a good deal of curiosity to ascertain its provisions. So short a testament was soon read; and his eye rested intently on the paper until it had taken in the last word. Then his hand dropped, and he regarded Bluewater with a surprise he neither affected, nor wished to conceal. He did not doubt his friend's sanity, but he greatly questioned his discretion.
"This is a very simple, but a very ingenious arrangement, to disturb the order of society," he said; "and to convert a very modest and unpretending, though lovely girl, into a forward and airs-taking old woman! What is this Mildred Dutton to you, that you should bequeath to her £30,000?"
"She is one of the meekest, most ingenuous, purest, and loveliest, of her meek, ingenuous, pure, and lovely sex, crushed to the earth by the curse of a brutal, drunken father; and, I am resolute to see that this world, for once, afford some compensation for its own miseries."