He called at Mr. Medler’s office the day after Jacob Nowell’s will had been executed, having had no hint of the fact from his father.  The solicitor told him what had been done, and how the most strenuous efforts on his part had only resulted in the insertion of Percival’s name after that of his daughter.

Whatever indignation Mr. Nowell may have felt at the fact that his daughter had been preferred before him, he contrived to keep hidden in his own mind.  The lawyer was surprised at the quiet gravity with which he received the intelligence.  He listened to Mr. Medler’s statement of the case with the calmest air of deliberation, seemed indeed to be thinking so deeply that it was as if his thoughts had wandered away from the subject in hand to some theme which allowed of more profound speculation.

“And if she should die childless, I should get all the free-hold property?” he said at last, waking up suddenly from that state of abstraction, and turning his thoughtful face upon the lawyer.

“Yes; all the real estate would be yours.”

“Have you any notion what the property is worth?”

“Not an exact notion.  Your father gave me a list of investments.  Altogether, I should fancy, the income will be something handsome—­between two and three thousand a year, perhaps.  Strange, isn’t it, for a man with all that money to have lived such a life as your father’s?”

“Strange indeed,” Percival Nowell cried with a sneer.  “And my daughter will step into two or three thousand a year,” he went on:  “very pleasant for her, and for her husband into the bargain.  Of course I’m not going to say that I wouldn’t rather have had the income myself.  You’d scarcely swallow that, as a man of the world, you see, Medler.  But the girl is my only child, and though circumstances have divided us for the greater part of our lives, blood is thicker than water; and in short, since there was no getting the governor to do the right thing, and leave this money to me, it’s the next best thing that he should leave it to Marian.”

“To say nothing of the possibility of her dying without children, and your coming into the property after all,” said Mr. Medler, wondering a little at Mr. Nowell’s philosophical manner of looking at the question.

“Sir,” exclaimed Percival indignantly, “do you imagine me capable of speculating upon the untimely death of my only child?”

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.  In the course of his varied experience he had found men and women capable of very queer things when their pecuniary interests were at stake; and he had not a most exalted opinion of Mr. Nowell’s virtue—­he knew too many secrets connected with his early career.

“Remember, if ever by any strange chance you should come into this property, you have me to thank for getting your name into the will, and for giving your daughter only a life interest.  She would have had every penny left to her without reserve, if I hadn’t fought for your interests as hard as ever I fought for anything in the whole course of my professional career.”