"To be sure; to be sure, Dick. Let them be married. Bessy has a miserable life of it here; and she'll be thirty on the twenty-ninth of this month. Oliver Rane was thirty the latter end of March."
"Only thirty!" cried Richard. "I think he must be more than that, sir."
"But he's not more," returned Mr. North. "I ought to know; and so ought you, Dick. Don't you remember they are both in the tontine? All the children put into that tontine were born in the same year."
"Oh, was it so? I had forgotten," returned Richard carelessly, for the tontine had never troubled him very much. He could just recollect that when they were children he and his brother were wont to teaze little Bessy, saying if she lived to be a hundred she would come into a fortune.
"That was an unlucky tontine, Dick," said Mr. North, shaking his head. "Of ten children who were entered for it, only three remain. The other seven are dead. Four of them died in the first or second year."
"How came Oliver Rane to be put into the tontine?" asked Richard. "I thought he came to life in India--and lived there for the first few years of his life. The tontine children were all Whitborough children."
"Thomas Gass did that, Richard. When he received news that his sister had this baby--Oliver--he insisted upon putting him into the tontine. It was a sort of salve to Tom Gass's conscience; at least I thought so: what his sister and the poor baby wanted then was money--not to be put into a useless tontine. Ah, well, Rane has got on without any one's assistance, and I dare say will flourish in the end."
Richard glanced at his watch; twelve o'clock; and increased his pace; a hundred and one things were wanting him at the works. Mr. North walked with him to the gate.
"Yes, it's all for the best, Dick. And we'll get the wedding comfortably over while madam's away."
"What has been her motive, sir, for opposing Bessy's engagement to Rane?"