"Well," began the Professor, as soon as they were seated, "so I was not mistaken – there was something in the brass bottle after all, then? Let's have a look at it, whatever it is."
For the moment Horace had almost forgotten the bottle. "Oh!" he said, "I – I got it open; but there was nothing in it."
"Just as I anticipated, sir," said the Professor. "I told you there couldn't be anything in a bottle of that description; it was simply throwing money away to buy it."
"I dare say it was, but I wished to speak to you on a much more important matter;" and Horace briefly explained his object.
"Dear me," said the Professor, rubbing up his hair irritably, "dear me! I'd no idea of this – no idea at all. I was under the impression that you volunteered to act as escort to my wife and daughter at St. Luc purely out of good nature to relieve me from what – to a man of my habits in that extreme heat – would have been an arduous and distasteful duty."
"I was not wholly unselfish, I admit," said Horace. "I fell in love with your daughter, sir, the first day I met her – only I felt I had no right, as a poor man with no prospects, to speak to her or you at that time."
"A very creditable feeling – but I've yet to learn why you should have overcome it."
So, for the third time, Ventimore told the story of the sudden turn in his fortunes.
"I know this Mr. Samuel Wackerbath by name," said the Professor; "one of the chief partners in the firm of Akers and Coverdale, the great estate agents – a most influential man, if you can only succeed in satisfying him."
"Oh, I don't feel any misgivings about that, sir," said Horace. "I mean to build him a house that will be beyond his wildest expectations, and you see that in a year I shall have earned several thousands, and I need not say that I will make any settlement you think proper when I marry – "
"When you are in possession of those thousands," remarked the Professor, dryly, "it will be time enough to talk of marrying and making settlements. Meanwhile, if you and Sylvia choose to consider yourselves engaged, I won't object – only I must insist on having your promise that you won't persuade her to marry you without her mother's and my consent."
Ventimore gave this undertaking willingly enough, and they returned to the drawing-room. Mrs. Futvoye could hardly avoid asking Horace, in his new character of fiancé, to stay and dine, which it need not be said he was only too delighted to do.
"There is one thing, my dear – er – Horace," said the Professor, solemnly, after dinner, when the neat parlourmaid had left them at dessert, "one thing on which I think it my duty to caution you. If you are to justify the confidence we have shown in sanctioning your engagement to Sylvia, you must curb this propensity of yours to needless extravagance."
"Papa!" cried Sylvia. "What could have made you think Horace extravagant?"
"Really," said Horace, "I shouldn't have called myself particularly so."
"Nobody ever does call himself particularly extravagant," retorted the Professor; "but I observed at St. Luc that you habitually gave fifty centimes as a pourboire when twopence, or even a penny, would have been handsome. And no one with any regard for the value of money would have given a guinea for a worthless brass vessel on the bare chance that it might contain manuscripts, which (as any one could have foreseen) it did not."
"But it's not a bad sort of bottle, sir," pleaded Horace. "If you remember, you said yourself the shape was unusual. Why shouldn't it be worth all the money, and more?"
"To a collector, perhaps," said the Professor, with his wonted amiability, "which you are not. No, I can only call it a senseless and reprehensible waste of money."
"Well, the truth is," said Horace, "I bought it with some idea that it might interest you."
"Then you were mistaken, sir. It does not interest me. Why should I be interested in a metal jar which, for anything that appears to the contrary, may have been cast the other day at Birmingham?"
"But there is something," said Horace; "a seal or inscription of some sort engraved on the cap. Didn't I mention it?"
"You said nothing about an inscription before," replied the Professor, with rather more interest. "What is the character – Arabic? Persian? Kufic?"
"I really couldn't say – it's almost rubbed out – queer little triangular marks, something like birds' footprints."
"That sounds like Cuneiform," said the Professor, "which would seem to point to a Phœnician origin. And, as I am acquainted with no Oriental brass earlier than the ninth century of our era, I should regard your description as, à priori, distinctly unlikely. However, I should certainly like to have an opportunity of examining the bottle for myself some day."
"Whenever you please, Professor. When can you come?"
"Why, I'm so much occupied all day that I can't say for certain when I can get up to your office again."
"My own days will be fairly full now," said Horace; "and the thing's not at the office, but in my rooms at Vincent Square. Why shouldn't you all come and dine quietly there some evening next week, and then you could examine the inscription comfortably afterwards, you know, Professor, and find out what it really is? Do say you will." He was eager to have the privilege of entertaining Sylvia in his own rooms for the first time.
"No, no," said the Professor; "I see no reason why you should be troubled with the entire family. I may drop in alone some evening and take the luck of the pot, sir."
"Thank you, papa," put in Sylvia; "but I should like to come too, please, and hear what you think of Horace's bottle. And I'm dying to see his rooms. I believe they're fearfully luxurious."
"I trust," observed her father, "that they are far indeed from answering that description. If they did, I should consider it a most unsatisfactory indication of Horace's character."
"There's nothing magnificent about them, I assure you," said Horace. "Though it's true I've had them done up, and all that sort of thing, at my own expense – but quite simply. I couldn't afford to spend much on them. But do come and see them. I must have a little dinner, to celebrate my good fortune – it will be so jolly if you'll all three come."
"If we do come," stipulated the Professor, "it must be on the distinct understanding that you don't provide an elaborate banquet. Plain, simple, wholesome food, well cooked, such as we have had this evening, is all that is necessary. More would be ostentatious."
"My dear dad!" protested Sylvia, in distress at this somewhat dictatorial speech. "Surely you can leave all that to Horace!"
"Horace, my dear, understands that, in speaking as I did, I was simply treating him as a potential member of my family." Here Sylvia made a private little grimace. "No young man who contemplates marrying should allow himself to launch into extravagance on the strength of prospects which, for all he can tell," said the Professor, genially, "may prove fallacious. On the contrary, if his affection is sincere, he will incur as little expense as possible, put by every penny he can save, rather than subject the girl he professes to love to the ordeal of a long engagement. In other words, the truest lover is the best economist."
"I quite understand, sir," said Horace, good-temperedly; "it would be foolish of me to attempt any ambitious form of entertainment – especially as my landlady, though an excellent plain cook, is not exactly a cordon bleu. So you can come to my modest board without misgivings."
Before he left, a provisional date for the dinner was fixed for an evening towards the end of the next week, and Horace walked home, treading on air rather than hard paving-stones, and "striking the stars with his uplifted head."
The next day