'Not the proverbial beggar on horseback, I hope. I'll do something handsome for you, of course.'
'I want nothing done for me while I have two hands, Shafto.'
'As you please,' replied the latter, puffing vigorously at his pipe. 'I have had enough of hopeless drudgery for a quarterly pittance in the dingy office of old Carlyon,' said he, after a long pause; 'and, by all the devils, I'll have no more of it now that I am going to be rich.'
Indeed, from the day of Lennard Melfort entrusting him with the packet, Shafto had done little else at the office but study the laws of succession in Scotland and England.
'How much you love money, Shafto!' said Florian, eying him wistfully.
'Do I? Well, I suppose that comes from having had so precious little of it in my time. I am a poor devil just now, but,' thought he exultantly, 'this "plant" achieved successfully, how many matrons with daughters unmarried will all be anxious to be mother to me! And Dulcie Carlyon I might have for asking; but I'll fly at higher game now, by Jove!'
As further credentials, Shafto now possessed himself of Major Melfort's sword, commissions, and medals, while Florian looked in blank dismay and growing mortification—puzzled by the new position in which he found himself, of being no longer his father's son—a source of unfathomable mystery.
Shafto was in great haste to be gone, to leave Revelstoke and its vicinity behind him. It was too late for regrets or repentance now. Not that he felt either, we suppose; and what he had done he would do again if there was no chance of being found out. In the growing exuberance of his spirits, he could not help, a day or two after, taunting Florian about Dulcie till they were on the verge of a quarrel, and wound up by saying, with a scornful laugh:
'You can't marry her—a fellow without a shilling in the world; and I wouldn't now, if she would have me, which I don't doubt.'
Poor Dulcie! She heard with undisguised grief and astonishment of these events, and of the approaching departure of the cousins.