"If I could only go ever so far away from him, and feel that there was the sea, or something of that kind, between us!"
"We will take you away—across the British Channel, or further still, if you like. Diana and M. Lenoble are to be married soon; and directly Lotta is strong enough for the journey we are to go over to Normandy, to their chateau."
"Chateau, indeed!" Mrs. Sheldon exclaimed peevishly. "The idea of Diana Paget, without a sixpence, and with a regular scamp of a father, marrying a man with a chateau, while my poor Charlotte—! I don't wish to wound your feelings, Mr. Hawkehurst, but it really does seem hard."
"It is hard that Lotta should not have married a prince—all the grandeurs of a prince in a fairy tale would only be her due; but it happens fortunately, you see, dear Mrs. Sheldon, that our sweet girl has simple tastes, and does not languish for jewels or palaces. If she should ever become rich—"
"Ah," sighed, Georgy despondently, "I don't expect that. I can't understand anything about this idea of a fine fortune that Mr. Sheldon had got into his head. I know that my husband's mother was a Miss Meynell, the daughter of a carpet-warehouseman in the city, and I can't see how any grand fortune is to come to Charlotte through her. And as for the Hallidays—Hyley and Newhall farms were all the property they ever owned within the memory of man."
"The fortune for which Charlotte is a claimant comes from the maternal ancestor of Christian Meynell. I do not count upon her possession of it as a certain good in the future. If it comes we will be thankful."
"Is it a very large sum of money?"
"Well, yes; I believe it is a considerable sum."
"Twenty thousand pounds, perhaps?"
"I have been told that it is as much."