“Twenty thousand with all my heart!” he said.  “On this condition, Graybrooke, that every farthing of it is settled on Natalie, and on her children after her.  Not a half-penny to me!” he cried magnanimously, in his brassiest tones.  “Not a half-penny to me!”

Let no man say the rich are heartless.  Sir Joseph seized his son-in-law’s hand in silence, and burst into tears.

Mr. Dicas, habitually a silent man, uttered the first two words that had escaped him since the business began.  “Highly creditable,” he said, and took a note of his instructions on the spot.

From that point the business of the settlement flowed smoothly on to its destined end.  Sir Joseph explained his views at the fullest length, and the lawyer’s pen kept pace with him.  Turlington, remaining in his place at the table, restricted himself to a purely passive part in the proceedings.  He answered briefly when it was absolutely necessary to speak, and he agreed with the two elders in everything.  A man has no attention to place at the disposal of other people when he stands at a crisis in his life.  Turlington stood at that crisis, at the trying moment when Sir Joseph’s unexpected proposal pressed instantly for a reply.  Two merciless alternatives confronted him.  Either he must repay the borrowed forty thousand pounds on the day when repayment was due, or he must ask Bulpit Brothers to grant him an extension of time, and so inevitably provoke an examination into the fraudulent security deposited with the firm, which could end in but one way.  His last, literally his last chance, after Sir Joseph had diminished the promised dowry by one half, was to adopt the high-minded tone which became his position, and to conceal the truth until he could reveal it to his father-in-law in the privileged character of Natalie’s husband.  “I owe forty thousand pounds, sir, in a fortnight’s time, and I have not got a farthing of my own.  Pay for me, or you will see your son-in-law’s name in the Bankrupt’s List.”  For his daughter’s sake—­who could doubt it?—­Sir Joseph would produce the money.  The one thing needful was to be married in time.  If either by accident or treachery Sir Joseph was led into deferring the appointed day, by so much as a fortnight only, the fatal “call” would come, and the firm of Pizzituti, Turlington & Branca would appear in the Gazette.

So he reasoned, standing on the brink of the terrible discovery which was soon to reveal to him that Natalie was the wife of another man.

“Richard!”

“Mr. Turlington!”

He started, and roused his attention to present things.  Sir Joseph on one side, and the lawyer on the other, were both appealing to him, and both regarding him with looks of amazement.

“Have you done with the settlement?” he asked.

“My dear Richard, we have done with it long since,” replied Sir Joseph.  “Have you really not heard what I have been saying for the last quarter of an hour to good Mr. Dicas here?  What can you have been thinking of?”