His manner was serious and subdued; but it was a manner
not easy to penetrate.
Gordon Graham flung himself back in his seat with a despairing groan.
"Well, Lydia," he said, "this accident in the hunting-field has been
the ruin of all our hopes. I really think you are the most unlucky
woman I ever encountered. After angling for something like ten years in
the matrimonial fisheries, you were just on the point of landing a
valuable fish, and at the last moment your husband that is to be goes
and gets drowned during a day's pleasure."
"What should you say if this accident, which you think unlucky, should,
after all, be a fortunate event for us?" asked Lydia, with
significance.
"What the deuce do you mean?"
"How very slow of comprehension you are to-day, Gordon!" exclaimed the
lady, impatiently; "Lionel Dale's income was only five thousand a
year--very little, after all, for a woman with my views of life."
"And with your genius for running into debt," muttered her brother.
"Do you happen to remember the terms of Sir Oswald Eversleigh's will?"
"I should think I do, indeed," replied the captain; "the will was
sufficiently talked about at the time of the baronet's death."
"That will left five thousand a year to each of the two brothers,
Lionel and Douglas. If either should die unmarried, the fortune left to
him was to go to the survivor.
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