“I am blessed, as I daresay you perceive, Mr. Fenton, in my only son,” Mrs. Pallinson said, when the young man had withdrawn to the adjoining apartment.  “It was my misfortune to lose an admirable husband very early in life; and I have been ever since that loss wholly devoted to my son Theobald.  My care has been amply rewarded by his goodness.  He is a most estimable and talented young man, and has already attained an excellent position in the medical profession.”

“You have reason to be proud of him,” Gilbert answered kindly.

“I am proud of him, Mr. Fenton.  He is the sole delight and chief object of my life.  His career up to this hour has been all that the fondest mother could desire.  If I can only see him happily and advantageously married, I shall have nothing left to wish for.”

“Indeed!” thought Gilbert.  “Then I begin to perceive the reason of Mrs. Pallinson’s anxiety about John Saltram.  She wants to secure Mrs. Branston’s handsome fortune for this son of hers.  Not much chance of that, I think, fascinating as the doctor may be.  Plain John Saltram stands to win that prize.”

They went into the front drawing-room presently, and heard Mr. Pallinson play the “Hallelujah Chorus,” arranged as a duet, with his cousin.  He was a young man who possessed several accomplishments in a small way—­could sing a little, and play the piano and guitar a little, sketch a little, and was guilty of occasional effusions in the poetical line which were the palest, most invertebrate reflections of Owen Meredith.  In the Maida-hill and St. John’s-wood districts he was accounted an acquisition for an evening party; and his dulcet accents and engaging manners had rendered him a favourite with the young mothers of the neighbourhood, who believed implicitly in Mr. Pallinson’s gray powders when their little ones’ digestive organs had been impaired by injudicious diet, and confided in Mr. Pallinson’s carefully-expressed opinion as the fiat of an inscrutable power.

Mr. Theobald Pallinson himself cherished a very agreeable opinion of his own merits.  Life seemed to him made on purpose that Theobald Pallinson should flourish and succeed therein.  He could hardly have formed any idea of the world except as an arena for himself.  He was not especially given to metaphysics; but it would not have been very difficult for him to believe that the entire universe was an emanation from the brain of Theobald Pallinson—­a phenomenal world existing only in his sense of sight and touch.  Happy in this opinion of himself, it is not to be supposed that the surgeon had any serious doubt of ultimate success with his cousin.  He regarded John Saltram as an interloper, who had gained ground in Mrs. Branston’s favour only by the accident of his own absence from the stage.  The Pallinsons had not been on visiting terms with Adela during the life of the East Indian merchant, who had not shown himself favourably disposed to his wife’s relations;