"
"I don't know that. Be very sure of one thing, Alice: that I shall not
stay an hour longer under the roof here if my uncle disinherits me. That
he, a man of indomitable will, should be so long making up his mind is a
proof that he shrinks from committing the injustice. The suspense it
keeps me in is the worst of all. I told him so the other evening when we
were sitting together and he was in an amiable mood. I said that any
decision he might come to would be more tolerable than this prolonged
suspense."
Alice drew a long breath at his temerity.
Harry laughed. "Indeed, I quite expected to be ordered out of the room
in a storm. Instead of that, he took it quietly, civilly telling me to
have a little more patience; and then began to speak of the annual new
year's dinner, which is not far off now."
"Mrs. Carradyne is thinking that he may not hold the dinner this year,
as he has been so ill," remarked the young lady.
"He will never give that up, Alice, as long as he can hold anything; and
he is almost well again, you know. Oh, yes; we shall have the dinner and
the chimes also."
"I have never heard the chimes," she said. "They have not played since I
came to Church Leet."
"They are to play this year," said Harry Carradyne. "But I don't think
my mother knows it."
"Is it true that Mrs. Carradyne does not like to hear the chimes? I seem
to have gathered the idea, somehow," added Alice. But she received no
answer.
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