"Ah, to be sure!" cried Edward Arundel. "You're not going to forget all about––Miss Marchmont!" He was going to say "little Mary," but had checked himself abruptly at the sudden recollection of the earnest hazel eyes that had kept wondering watch upon his ravages at the breakfast–table. "I'm sure Miss Marchmont's born to be an heiress. I never saw such a little princess."
"What!" demanded John Marchmont sadly, "in a darned pinafore and a threadbare frock?"
The boy's face flushed, almost indignantly, as his old master said this.
"You don't think I'm such a snob as to admire a lady"––he spoke thus of Miss Mary Marchmont, yet midway between her eighth and ninth birthday––"the less because she isn't rich? But of course your daughter will have the fortune by–and–by, even if––"
He stopped, ashamed of his want of tact; for he knew John would divine the meaning of that sudden pause.
"Even if I should die before Philip Marchmont," the teacher of mathematics answered, quietly. "As far as that goes, Mary's chance is as remote as my own. The fortune can only come to her in the event of Arthur dying without issue, or, having issue, failing to cut off the entail, I believe they call it."
"Arthur! that's the son of the present possessor?"
"Yes. If I and my poor little girl, who is delicate like her mother, should die before either of these three men, there is another who will stand in my shoes, and will look out perhaps more eagerly than I have done for his chances of getting the property."
"Another!" exclaimed Mr. Arundel. "By Jove, Marchmont, it's the most complicated affair I ever heard of. It's worse than those sums you used to set me in barter: 'If A. sells B. 999 Stilton cheeses at 9 1/2d a pound,' and all that sort of thing, you know. Do make me understand it, old fellow, if you can."
John Marchmont sighed.