Poor young Edward was the deceased minor whose early death had wrecked the finest chances the Windgall family craft had ever carried.
"I suppose so," said Begg.
"I presume," said the earl, "that even if he wanted to call in his money you could arrange elsewhere?"
"With regard to the first mortgage?" asked Mr. Begg. "Certainly."
"And what about the new arrangement?" asked the earl nervously.
"Impossible, I regret to say."
"Very well," returned the earl, with a sigh. "I suppose the timber must go. If poor Edward had lived, it would all have been very different."
Next day, when Kimberley, preposterously overdressed and thoroughly ashamed of himself, was trying to talk business in Mr. Begg's office, the Earl of Windgall was announced. There was nothing in the world that could have terrified him more. And when the father of his ideal love, Lady Ella Santerre, shook him by the hand, he could only gasp and gurgle in response. But the earl's manner gradually reassured him, and in a little time he began to plume himself in harmless trembling vanity upon sitting in the same room with a nobleman and a great lawyer.
"I am pleased to have met Mr. Kimberley," said the earl, in going; "and I trust we shall see more of each other."
Mr. Kimberley flushed, and bowed in a violent flutter.