“I don’t know the writing,” she said, opening it carelessly. But in the next minute she laid it hastily before him.
“Read it, father,” she cried. “Old Mr. Myrtle is dead, and has left me three thousand pounds! You remember how he made a pet of me in my school-days?”
Mr. Channell read the letter in silence; and then he looked up quickly into his daughter’s face, and put his hand on hers.
“I hope no one is defrauded by this legacy,” he said, gravely. “You will have quite enough without it, Nelly. Had Mr. Myrtle any relations?”
“He used to say that he was quite alone in the world,” she answered. “His house was next to our school, and the gardens joined; that was how I came to see so much of him. No one ever went to stay with him, and he seldom had even a caller.”
“I wish he had left the money to a poorer girl,” remarked Mr. Channell. “Well, Nelly, you will now have a hundred and fifty pounds a year to do as you like with. I hope you’ll spend it wisely, my dear.”
It was generally known throughout the county that Nelly was the daughter of a rich man. She was very pretty too, although not so beautiful as her mother had been; and at nineteen she was not without would-be suitors and admirers. But not one of these was a man after Robert Channell’s own heart. They were hunting and sporting country gentlemen, who talked of dogs and horses all day long. He wanted a man of another stamp for Nelly. He did not care about long pedigrees, nor did he hanker after ancestral lands. He desired for his child a husband who would guide a young wife as bravely up the hill of Sacrifice as over the plain called Ease.
It might have been that Robert Channell thought too much of what the husband should be to the wife, and too little of what the wife is to the husband. There are moments in the life of the strongest men when only the touch of a woman’s hand has kept them from turning into a wrong road. But it is not easy for a father, anxious for the safety of his girl’s future, to think of anything beyond her requirements. Nelly was a prize; and Mr. Channell could but daily pray that she might not be won by one who was unworthy of her.