never to speak about it. Let us talk of something else. You cannot
enter into my feelings; it makes my blood boil. Oh, Miss Bruce! you
can't conceive what a disinherited man feels--and I live at the very
door: his old trees, that ought to be mine, fling their shadows over my
little flower beds; the sixty chimneys of Huntercombe Hall look down on
my cottage; his acres of lawn run up to my little garden, and nothing
but a ha-ha between us."

"It _is_ hard," said Miss Bruce, composedly; not that she entered into
a hardship of this vulgar sort, but it was her nature to soothe and
please people.

"Hard!" cried Richard Bassett, encouraged by even this faint sympathy;
"it would be unendurable but for one thing--I shall have my own some
day."

"I am glad of that," said the lady; "but how?"

"By outliving the wrongful heir."

Miss Bruce turned pale. She had little experience of men's passions.
"Oh, Mr. Bassett!" said she--and there was something pure and holy in
the look of sorrow and alarm she cast on the presumptuous
speaker--"pray do not cherish such thoughts. They will do you harm. And
remember life and death are not in our hands. Besides--"

"Well?"'

"Sir Charles might--"