“Exactly what I say. I will lend you that sum to help Mrs. Evershed on that one condition and that alone. You will have, of course, to sign a post obit, but such things are done every day. On the day you come in for the estates, worth over sixty thousand a year, you will pay me back that trifling loan. Are you willing to oblige Barbara’s mother, or are you not?”
CHAPTER V.
“I HAVE MISJUDGED HIM.”
Two or three days later Pelham received a note from Barbara Evershed.
“Dearest Dick, come and see me at once,” she wrote. “Something most wonderful and unexpected has happened.”
Pelham, who was just attending to his first brief, started up with an exclamation, put on his hat, and in half an hour had arrived at Mrs. Evershed’s house in Mark Place. He was admitted at once, and ran up to the drawing-room, where Barbara was waiting for him.
“Dear old Dick,” she cried, “I am about the happiest girl on earth!”
“But what has happened? I never saw you look so excited before.”
“I have reason to be excited. We can be engaged now quite openly. Oh, how happy I am!”
“And so am I, Barbara, if it is true; but has your mother given her consent?”
“Yes, it is all right now. Everything has come right, and in such a wonderful, marvelous way.”