“You have been in possession of this estate almost a year,” he said, “so I hope, indeed I assume, that the making of a will is not what you have neglected?”

“But it is.”

Rather an awkward thing this to be said to the heir-at-law.  He paused for a moment, then remarked, “I met just now, driving away from your door, the very man who read to us our grandmother’s will.”

“I have been telling him that he shall make one for me forthwith.”

“When I consider that you have many claims,” said John, “and consider further that your property is all land, I wonder at your——­”

“My neglect.  Yes, I knew you would say so.”

“When shall this be done then?”

“To-morrow.”

Then Valentine began to talk of other matters, and he expressed, with a directness certainly not called for, his regret that John Mortimer should have made the sacrifices he had acknowledged to, in order eventually to withdraw his name and interest altogether from his banking affairs.

John was evidently surprised, but he took Valentine’s remarks good-humouredly.

“I know you have had losses,” continued Valentine.  “But now you have got a partner, and——­”

“It’s all settled,” said John, declining to argue the question.

“You fully mean to retire from probable riches to a moderate competence?”

“Quite; I have, as you say, made great sacrifices in order to do so.”

“I rather wonder at you,” Valentine added; “there was no great risk, hardly any, in fact.”

“I do not at all repent my choice,” said John with a smile in his eyes that showed Valentine how useless it was to say more.  John was amused, surprised, but not moved at all from his determination.  He thought proper to add, “My father, as you know, left two thousand pounds each to every one of my children.”

“And he gave the same sum to me,” Valentine broke in.  “You said my property was all land, but it is not.  And so, John, you will no longer be a rich man.”

“I shall be able to live just as I do at present,” answered John Mortimer, calmly turning him round to his own duty.  “And you have relatives who are decidedly poor.  Then one of your sisters has married a curate without a shilling, or any seeming chance of preferment; and your brother, to whom you owe so much, has cramped his resources very much for the sake of his mother’s family.  Of course, when I married Emily, I insisted on repaying him the one thousand pounds he had made over to her on her first marriage, but——­”

“Giles is very fairly off,” interrupted Valentine, “and some day no doubt his wife will have a good fortune.”

“I thought the old man had settled eight thousand pounds on her.”

“He made a settlement on her when she was to marry me, and he signed it.  But that settlement was of no use when she married St. George.”

“Had he the imprudence, then, to leave everything to chance?”