Locked Up

"I thought of getting a place in New York. What could I do in a country
parish?"

"Expensive, living in New York!" said the professor, with a glance of
quiet scrutiny at his companion's profile. "Marriage won't be a good
pecuniary investment for you, remember. Better begin safe. The village
salary will be good enough."

Bressant communed with himself in silence a few moments, before
replying: "As my father's will stands, Mrs. Vanderplanck--I believe he owed some
obligation or other to her--receives half the fortune, and I the other
half. Are you certain that my marriage, and the disclosure it would
bring about, will forfeit the whole of it?"

Professor Valeyon touched Dolly with the whip, and turned inward his
white-bearded lips.

"All I can tell you about it," said he, "is this: when your mother
married your father, all her property was settled upon her; so that it
was only the event of her death, intestate, that could have given your
father the right to will it away at all."

At this information, Bressant folded his arms, and, looking steadfastly
before him, said not a word. A silence followed between the two, which
lasted over half a mile. Dolly seemed to be in a meditative humor,
likewise; she whisked her tail with an absorbed air, and once in a while
shook her ears, or wagged her head, as though accepting or rejecting
some hypothesis or proposition. Most likely, her problems found their
solution in the manger that afternoon; but those of the professor and
his companion received neither so early nor so satisfactory a
settlement.