How should he set this matter right so as to inflict no injury on his niece, and no sorrow to himself--if that indeed could be avoided?
And then other thoughts crowded on his brain.

He had always professed--professed at any rate to himself and to her--that of all the vile objects of a man's ambition, wealth, wealth merely for its own sake, was the vilest.

They, in their joint school of inherent philosophy, had progressed to ideas which they might find it not easy to carry out, should they be called on by events to do so.

And if this would have been difficult to either when acting on behalf of self alone, how much more difficult when one might have to act for the other! This difficulty had now come to the uncle.

Should he, in this emergency, take upon himself to fling away the golden chance which might accrue to his niece if Scatcherd should be encouraged to make her partly his heir?
"He'd want her to go and live there--to live with him and his wife.
All the money in the Bank of England would not pay her for such misery," said the doctor to himself, as he slowly rode into is own yard.
On one point, and one only, had he definitely made up his mind.