up, if it be only to throw me down again."

"There, there, we'll leave it," retorted Captain Monk testily. "No
harm's done to you yet, Mr. Harry; I don't know that it will be."

But Harry Carradyne felt sure that it would be; that he should be
despoiled of the inheritance. The resolute look of power on Eliza's
face, bent on him as he quitted the chamber, was an earnest of that.
Captain Monk was not the determined man he had once been; that was over.

"A pretty kettle of fish, this is," ruefully soliloquised Harry, as he
marched along the corridor. "Eliza's safe to get her will; no doubt of
that. And I? what am I to do? I can't repurchase and go back amongst
them again like a returned shilling; at least, I won't; and I can't turn
Parson, or Queen's Counsel, or Cabinet Minister. I'm fitted for nothing
now, that I see, but to be a gentleman-at-large; and what would the
gentleman's income be?"

Standing at the corridor window, softly whistling, he ran over ways and
means in his mind. He had a pretty house of his own, Peacock's Range,
formerly his father's, and about four hundred a-year. After his mother's
death it would not be less than a thousand a-year.

"That means bread and cheese at present. Later--Heyday, young lady,
what's the matter?"

The school-room door, close by, had opened with a burst, and Miss Kate
Dancox was flying down the stairs--her usual progress the minute
lessons were over. Harry strolled into the room. The governess was
putting the littered table straight.