“I am afraid there was some previous ceremony.  But stay, Gerald!  There is no certainty that it was valid in the first place, and in the next, nothing is known of Benista since 1865, when he was an old man, so that there is a full chance that he was dead before-—”

“Before April 1868.  I say, Uncle Lance, they want to make no end of a bear-fight for my coming of age.  I must be out of the way first.”

“Don’t cry out too soon.  Even if the worst came to the worst, as the property was left to you by will individually, I doubt whether this discovery, if real, would make any difference in law.  I do not know.”

“But would I take it on those terms?  It would be simply defrauding Clement, and all of you—-”

“Perhaps, long before, we may be satisfied,” said Lance.  “For the present, I think nothing can be done but endeavour to ascertain the facts.”

“One comfort is,” said Gerald, “I have gained a sister.  I have walked with her to the corner of her place-—the marble works, you know-—and she really is a jolly little thing, quite innocent of all her mother’s tricks, thinking Mrs. Henderson the first of human beings, except perhaps Flight, the aesthetic parson.  I should not have selected him, you know, but between them they have kept her quite a white sheet-—a Miranda any Ferdinand might be glad to find, and dreading nothing so much as falling into the hands of that awful brute.  Caliban himself couldn’t have been worse!  I have promised her to do what I can to save her-—buy her off—-anything.”

“Poor child,” said Lance.  “But, Gerald, nothing of this must be said these next few days.  We can’t put ourselves out of condition for this same raree-show.”

“I’m sure it’s a mere abomination to me,” said Gerald disconsolately.  “I can’t think why we should be dragged into all this nuisance for what is not even our own concern.”

“I’m sure I thought you the rope that dragged me!  At any rate much higher up on it.”

“Well, I never thought you would respond—-you, who have enough on your hands at Bexley.”

“One stroke even on the outskirts is a stroke for all the cause.”

“The cause!  I don’t believe in the cause, whatever it is.  What a concatenation now, that you and I should make fools of ourselves in order to stave off the establishment of national education, as if we could, or as if it was worth doing.”

“Then why did you undertake it?”

“Oh, ah!  Why, one wants something to do down here, and the Merrifield lot are gone upon it; and I did want to go through the thing again, but now it seems all rot.”

“Nevertheless, having pledged ourselves to the performance, we cannot cry off, and the present duty is to pack dull care away, put all this out of our heads, and regard it as a mere mare’s nest as long as possible, and above all not upset Cherry.  Remember, let this turn out as it will, you are yourself still, and her own boy, beloved for your father’s sake, the joy of our dear brother, and her great comforter.  A wretched mistake can never change that.”