“It was the house-keeper up at the Castle, ma’am, sent her to you,” explained Mary. “She is a kind-hearted lady and has had everything done to prepare’ for you. And she said to say the big cat sleeping on the rug might make the room more homelike to you. ”

When they were ready, they went downstairs into another big bright room. The stately white cat had responded to Lord Fauntleroy’s stroking and followed him downstairs, and when he threw himself down upon the rug, she curled herself up grandly beside him as if she intended to make friends. Cedric was so pleased that he put his head down by hers, and lay stroking her, not noticing what his mother and Mr. Havisham were saying.

They were, indeed, speaking in a rather low tone. Mrs. Errol looked a little pale and agitated.

“Does he need to go tonight?” she said. “May he stay with me tonight?”

“Yes,” answered Mr. Havisham in the same low tone; “it will not be necessary for him to go tonight. I myself will go to the Castle as soon as we have dined, and inform the Earl of our arrival.”

Then she looked at the lawyer. “Will you tell him, if you please,” she said, “that I do not want the money?”

“The money!” Mr. Havisham exclaimed. “You can not mean the income he proposed to settle upon you!”

“Yes,” she answered, quite simply; “I think I should rather not have it. I am obliged to accept the house, and I thank him for it, because it makes it possible for me to be near my child; but I have a little money of my own, – enough to live simply upon, – and I should rather not take the other. As he dislikes me so much, I should feel a little as if I were selling Cedric to him. I am giving him up only because I love him enough to forget myself for his good, and because his father would wish it to be so.”

Mr. Havisham rubbed his chin.

“This is very strange,” he said. “He will be very angry. He won’t understand it.”

“I think he will understand it after he thinks it over,” she said. “I do not really need the money, and why should I accept luxuries from the man who hates me so much that he takes my little boy from me-his son’s child?”

Mr. Havisham looked reflective for a few moments.

“I will deliver your message,” he said afterward.

When, later in the evening, Mr. Havisham presented himself at the Castle, he was taken at once to the Earl. He found him sitting by the fire in a luxurious easy-chair, his foot on a gout-stool. He looked at the lawyer sharply from under his shaggy eyebrows, but Mr. Havisham could see that, in spite of his pretense at calmness, he was nervous and secretly excited.

“Well,” he said; “well, Havisham, come back, have you? What’s the news?”

“Lord Fauntleroy and his mother are at Court Lodge,” replied Mr. Havisham. “They bore the voyage very well and are in excellent health.”

The Earl made a half-impatient sound and moved his hand restlessly.

“Glad to hear it,” he said brusquely. “So far, so good. Have a glass of wine and settle down. What else?”

Mr. Havisham drank a little of the glass of port he had poured out for himself, and sat holding it in his hand.

“It is rather difficult to judge of the character of a child of seven,” he said cautiously.

“A fool, is he?” the Earl exclaimed. “Or a clumsy cub? His American blood tells, does it?”

“I do not think it has injured him, my lord,” replied the lawyer in his dry, deliberate[49] fashion. “I don’t know much about children, but I thought him to be rather a fine lad.”

“Healthy and well-grown?” asked my lord.

“Apparently very healthy, and quite well-grown,” replied the lawyer.