when he saw his daughter the wife of Godfrey Eldon. The loss which
so soon followed was correspondingly hard to bear, and but for Mrs.
Eldon's gentle sympathy he would scarcely have survived the blow. We
know already how his character had impressed that lady; such respect
was not lightly to be won, and he came to regard it as the most
precious thing that life had left him.

But the man was not perfect, and his latest practical undertaking
curiously enough illustrated the failing which he seemed most
completely to have outgrown. It was of course a deplorable error to
think of mining in the beautiful valley which had once been the
Eldons' estate. Richard Mutimer could not perceive that. He was a
very old man, and possibly the instincts of his youth revived as his
mind grew feebler; he imagined it the greatest kindness to Mrs.
Eldon and her son to increase as much as possible the value of the
property he would leave at his death. They, of course, could not
even hint to him the pain with which they viewed so barbarous a
scheme; he did not as much as suspect a possible objection.
Intensely happy in his discovery and the activity to which it led,
he would have gone to his grave rich in all manner of content but
for that fatal news which reached him from London, where Hubert
Eldon was sup posed to be engaged in sober study in an interval of
University work. Doubtless it was this disappointment that caused
his sudden death, and so brought about a state of things which could
he have foreseen it, would have occasioned him the bitterest grief.

He had never lost sight of his relatives in London, and had made for
them such modest provision as suited his view of the fitness of
things. To leave wealth to young men of the working class would have
seemed to him the most inexcusable of follies; if such were to rise