The latter, extremely well dressed, wears a posy of spring flowers at
his buttonhole, and betrays in his whole bearing that he is under some
extraneous influence of an unbusinesslike nature. Bargrave subsides
into his leather chair with a grunt, shuffles his papers, dips a pen
in the inkstand, and looks over his spectacles at his nephew.

"Waste of time, waste of capital, Tom," says he, with some irritation.
"Mind, I washed _my_ hands of it from the first. You've been at work
now for some months; that's _your_ look-out and it's been kept apart
and separate from the general business--that's _mine_."

"I've got Tangle's opinion here," answered Tom; "I won't ask you to
look at it, uncle. He's dead against us. Just what you said six months
back. There's no getting over that trust-deed, nor through it,
nor round it, nor any way to the other side of it. I've done _my_
d----dest, and we're not a bit better off than when we began."

He spoke in a cheerful, almost an exulting tone, quite unlike a man
worsted in a hard and protracted struggle.

"I'm sorry for the young lady," observed Bargrave; "but I never
expected anything else. It's a fine estate, and it must go to the male
heir. She has but a small settlement, Tom, very inadequate to her
position, as I told poor Mr. Bruce many a time. He used to say
everything would be set right by his will, and now one of these girls
is left penniless, and the other with a pittance, a mere pittance,
brought up, as I make no doubt she was, to believe herself an
heiress."