"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