“You may hope everything, if you can-only be patient,” said the Captain.  “I tell you frankly, that nothing would make me happier than to see my dear child married to a good man.  I have had many dreary thoughts about her future of late.  I think you know that I have nothing to leave her.”

“I have never thought of that.  If she were destined to inherit all the wealth of the Rothschilds, she could be no dearer to me than she is.”

“Ah, what a noble thing true love is!  And do you know that she is not really my niece—­only a poor waif that I adopted fourteen years ago?”

“I have heard as much from her own lips.  There is nothing, except some unworthiness in herself, that could make any change in my estimation of her.”

“Unworthiness in herself!  You need never fear that.  But I must tell you Marian’s story before this business goes any farther.  Will you come and smoke your cigar with me to-night?  She is going to drink tea at a neighbour’s, and we shall be alone.  They are all fond of her, poor child.”

“I shall be very happy to come.  And in the meantime, you will try and ascertain the real state of her feelings without distressing her in any way; and you will tell me the truth with all frankness, even if it is to be a deathblow to all my hopes?”

“Even if it should be that.  But I do not fear such a melancholy result.  I think Marian is sensible enough to know the value of an honest man’s heart.”

Gilbert quitted the Captain in a more hopeful spirit than that in which he had gone to the cottage that day.  It was only reasonable that this man should be the best judge of his niece’s feelings.

Left alone, George Sedgewick paced the room in a meditative mood, with his hands thrust deep into his trousers-pockets, and his gray head bent thoughtfully.

“She must like him,” he muttered to himself.  “Why should not she like him?—­good-looking, generous, clever, prosperous, well-connected, and over head and ears in love with her.  Such a marriage is the very thing I have been praying for.  And without such a marriage, what would be her fate when I am gone?  A drudge and dependent in some middle-class family perhaps—­tyrannised over and tormented by a brood of vulgar children.”

Marian came in at the open window while he was still pacing to and fro with a disturbed countenance.

“My dear uncle, what is the matter?” she asked, going up to him and laying a caressing hand upon his shoulder.  “I know you never walk about like that unless you are worried by something.”

“I am not worried to-day, my love; only a little perplexed,” answered the Captain, detaining the caressing little hand, and planting himself face to face with his niece, in the full sunlight of the broad bow-window.  “Marian, I thought you and I had no secrets from each other?”

“Secrets, uncle George!”

“Yes, my dear.  Haven’t you something pleasant to tell your old uncle—­something that a girl generally likes telling?  You had a visitor yesterday afternoon while I was asleep.”