CHAPTER XIV.
The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne's mind the image of Mrs.Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of South's death.

He marvelled what people could have been thinking about in the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more, what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other village people, to exchange their old copyholds for life-leases.

But having naturally succeeded to these properties through his father, he had done his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck with his father's negligence in not insuring South's life.
After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs, turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between the mattress and the sacking.

In this he kept his leases, which had remained there unopened ever since his father's death.

It was the usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents.
Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them over.