The vanquished is fain to accept whatever the victor is
pleased to give, though discontent and impotent rage may be gnawing his
entrails. George Sheldon had been a loser in that game in which the
Haygarthian inheritance was the stake. He had held good cards, and had
played them with considerable cleverness; but no play could prevail
against his antagonist's ace of trumps. The ace of trumps was Charlotte
Halliday; and as to his mode and matter of playing this card, Mr. Sheldon
was for the present profoundly mysterious.
"I have known a good many inscrutable cards in my time," the solicitor of
Gray's Inn observed to his elder brother, in the course of fraternal
converse; "but I think for inscrutability you put the topper on the lot.
What do you expect to get out of this Haygarth estate? Come, Phil, let us
have your figures in plain English. I am to have a fifth--that's all
signed and sealed. But how about your share? What agreement have you got
from Miss Halliday?"
"None."
"None!"
"What would the world think of me if I extorted money, or the promise of
money, from my wife's daughter? Do you think I could enforce any deed
between her and me?"
"Ah, I see; you go in for respectability. And you are going to leave the
settlement of your claims to your stepdaughter's generosity. You will let
her marry Hawkehurst, with her hundred thousand pounds; and then you will
say to those two, 'Mr.
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