“I cannot acknowledge that he has any such right.  His extravagance almost ruined me when he was a young man; and his ingratitude would have broken my heart, if I had been weak enough to suffer myself to be crushed by it.”

“Time works changes amongst the worst of us, Mr. Nowell, I daresay your son has improved his habits in all these years and is heartily sorry for the errors of his youth.”

“Have you seen him, Medler?” the old man asked quickly.

“Seen your son lately?  No; indeed, my dear sir, I had no notion that he was in England.”

The fact is, that Percival Nowell had called upon Mr. Medler more than once since his arrival in London; and had discussed with that gentleman the chances of his father’s having made, or not made, a will, and the possibility of the old man’s being so far reconciled to him as to make a will in his favour.  Percival Nowell had gone farther than this, and had promised the attorney a handsome percentage upon anything that his father might be induced to leave him by Mr. Medler’s influence.

The discussion lasted for a long time; Mr. Medler pushing on, stage by stage, in the favour of his secret client, anxious to see whether Jacob Nowell might not be persuaded to allow his son’s name to take the place of his granddaughter, whom he had never seen, and who was really no more than a stranger to him, the attorney took care to remind him.  But on this point the old man was immovable.  He would leave his money to Marian, and to no one else.  He had no desire that his son should ever profit by the labours and deprivations of all those joyless years in which his fortune had been scraped together.  It was only as the choice of the lesser evil that he would consent to Percival’s inheriting the property from his daughter, rather than it should fall into the hands of Mr. Holbrook.  The lawyer had hard work before he could bring his client to this point; but he did at last succeed in doing so, and Percival Nowell’s name was written in the will.

“I don’t suppose Nowell will thank me much for what I’ve done, though I’ve had difficulty enough in doing it,” Mr. Medler said to himself, as he walked slowly homewards after this prolonged conference in Queen Anne’s Court.  “For of course the chances are ten to one against his surviving his daughter.  Still these young women sometimes go off the hooks in an unexpected way, and he may come into the reversion.”

There was only one satisfaction for the attorney, and that lay in the fact that this long, laborious interview had been all in the way of business, and could be charged for accordingly:  “To attending at your own house with relation to drawing up the rough draft of your will, and consultation of two hours and a half thereupon;” and so on.  The will was to be executed next day; and Mr. Medler was to take his clerk with him to Queen Anne’s Court, to act as one of the witnesses.  He had obtained one other triumph in the course of the discussion, which was the insertion of his own name as executor in place of Gilbert Fenton, against whom he raised so many specious arguments as to shake the old man’s faith in Marian’s jilted lover.