Miss Gladwin's Chance by Antonio Hope — Read

Old Tom Gladwin was not a man to whom you volunteered advice. He had made an immense deal of money for himself, and people who have done that generally like also to manufacture their own advice on their own premises; perhaps it is better done that way, perhaps there's just a prejudice in favour of the home trade-mark. Anyhow, old Tom needed no suggestions from outside. You said, "Yes, Sir Thomas," or "Of course not, Sir Thomas," or "Certainly, Sir Thomas." At all events, you limited your remarks to something like that if you were -- as I was -- a young solicitor trying to keep his father's connection together, of which Sir Thomas's affairs and the business of the Worldstone Park estate formed a considerable and lucrative portion. But everybody was in the same story about him -- secretary, bailiff, stud-groom, gardener, butler -- yes, butler, although Sir Thomas had confessedly never tasted champagne till he was forty, whereas Gilson had certainly been weaned on it. Even Miss Nettie Tyler, when she came on the scene, had the good sense to accept Sir Thomas's version of her heart's desire; neither had she much cause to quarrel with his reading, since it embraced Sir Thomas himself and virtually the whole of his worldly possessions. He was worth perhaps half-a-million pounds in money, and the net rent-roll of Worldstone was ten thousand, even after you had dressed it up and curled its hair, for all the world as if it were a suburban villa instead of an honest, self-respecting country gentleman's estate, which ought to have been run to pay three per cent. But the new-comers will not take land seriously; they leave that as a prospect for their descendants when the ready money, the city-made money, has melted away.

So I took his instructions for his marriage settlement and his new will without a word, although they seemed to me to be, under the circumstances, pretty stiff documents. The old gentleman -- he was not really old, fifty-eight or-nine, I should say, but he looked like a granite block that has defied centuries -- had, of course, two excuses. In the first place, he was fairly crazy about Nettie Tyler, orphan daughter of the old vicar of Worldstone, an acquaintance of two months' standing and (I will say for her) one of the prettiest little figures on a horse that I ever saw. In the second, he wanted -- yes, inevitably he wanted -- to found a family and to hand on the baronetcy which had properly rewarded his strenuous and successful efforts on his own behalf; it was the sort of baronetcy which is obviously pregnant with a peerage -- a step, not a crown; one learns to distinguish these varieties. Accordingly, to cut details short, the effect of the new will and of the marriage settlement was that, given issue of the said intended marriage (and intended it was for the following Tuesday), Miss Beatrice Gladwin was to have five hundred a year on her father's death, and the rest went to what, for convenience's sake, I may call the new undertaking -- to the Gladwin-Tyler establishment and what might spring therefrom. Even the five hundred was by the will only, therefore revocable. Five hundred a year is not despicable, and is good, like other boons, until revoked. But think what Beatrice Gladwin had been two months before -- the greatest heiress in the county, mistress of all! So the old will had made her -- the old will in my office safe, which, come next Tuesday, would be so much waste paper.