“But you will wonder what can be the particular purpose for which I have bidden you here to-night.  Be assured that it was not to ask you to listen to gloomy sermons on the, to others, not very interesting fact of my approaching end, but rather for a joyful and a definite reason.  One wish I have long had, it is—­that before I go, I may see my son’s child, the little Caresfoot that is to fill my place in future years, prattling about my knees.  But this I shall never see.  What I have to announce to you, however, is the first step towards it, my son’s engagement to Miss Lee, the young lady on my right.”

“Look at his face,” whispered Mrs. Bellamy to her neighbour, during the murmur of applause that followed this announcement.  “Look quick.”

Philip had put his hands down upon his chair as though to raise himself up, and an expression of such mingled rage and terror swept across his features as, once seen, could not easily be forgotten.  But so quickly did it pass that perhaps Mrs. Bellamy, who was watching, was the only one in all that company to observe it.  In another moment he was smiling and bowing his acknowledgements to whispered and telegraphed congratulations.

“You all know Miss Lee,” went on the old squire, “as you knew her father and mother before her; she is a sound shoot from an honest stock, a girl after my own heart, a girl that I love, and that all who come under her influence will love, and this engagement is to me the most joyful news that I have heard for many a year.  May God, ay, and man too, so deal with my son as he deals with Maria Lee!

“And now I have done; I have already kept you too long.  With your consent, we will have no more speeches, no returning of thanks; we will spare Philip his blushes.  But before I sit down I will bid you all farewell, for I am in my eighty-third year, and I feel that I shall never see very many of your faces again.  I wish that I had been a better neighbour to you all, as there are many other things I wish, now that it is too late to fulfil them; but I still hope that some of you will now and again find a kind thought for the old man whom among yourselves you talk of as ‘Devil Caresfoot.’  Believe me, my friends, there is truth in the old proverb:  the devil is not always as black as he is painted.  I give you my toast, my son Philip and his affianced wife, Maria Lee.”

The whole company rose, actuated by a common impulse, and drank the health standing; and such was the pathos of the old squire’s speech, that there were eyes among those present that were not free from tears.  Then the ladies retired, amongst them poor Maria, who was naturally upset at the unexpected, and, in some ways, unwelcome notoriety thus given to herself.

In the drawing-room, she was so overwhelmed with congratulations, that at last, feeling that she could not face a fresh edition from the male portion of the gathering, she ordered her carriage, and quietly slipped away home, to think over matters at her leisure.