"Because my plans are as yet but half formed. I may soon be able to speak more plainly. Do you see those two figures yonder, walking in the pleasaunce?"
"Yes, I see them—my uncle and his wife," answered Reginald, with a gesture of impatience.
"They are very happy—are they not? It is quite an Arcadian picture. I beg you to contemplate it earnestly."
"What a fool you are, Carrington!" cried the young man, flinging away his cigar. "If my uncle chooses to make an idiot of himself, that is no reason why I should watch the evidence of his folly!"
"But there is another reason," answered Victor, with a sinister look in his glittering black eyes. "Look at the picture while you may, Reginald, for you will not have the chance of seeing it very often."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that the day is near at hand when Lady Eversleigh will fall from her high estate. I mean that an elevation as sudden as hers is often the forerunner of a sudden disgrace. The hour will come when Sir Oswald will mourn his fatal marriage as the one irrevocable mistake of his life; and when, in his despair, he will restore you, the disgraced nephew, to your place, as his acknowledged heir; because you will at least seem to him more worthy than his disgraced wife."
"And who is to bring this about?" asked Reginald, gazing at his friend in complete bewilderment.
"I am," answered the surgeon; "but before I do so I must have some understanding as to the price of my services. If the cat who pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for the benefit of the monkey had made an agreement beforehand as to how much of the plunder he was to receive for his pains, the name of the animal would not have become a bye-word with posterity. When I have worked to win your fortune, I must have my reward, my dear Reginald."
"Do you suppose I should be ungrateful?"