last will-the one which he drew up a very few months before his death? Tell me, Robert! I do not say tell me the truth, for I know you never told a lie !"

"Marcia !

"I must know, Robert! I will know! But I need not ask. It is as I supposed, or you would have said 'No' at once. Then you are lord of the Manor, and I am an impostor, an usurper? Speak! I cannot bear suspense; you are torturing me! You found this will?"

"Since you will have it, Marcia dear, yes! But I never meant you to know it; it would have been burned ere this but for Christopher Gray: he thought it ought not to be absolutely destroyed."

Destroyed or not, it would have made no difference; I should have made you tell me the contents. Tell me now— I want to know all."

And Robert told her all, bitterly repenting that he had not suffered the bureau to fall to pieces ere he summoned Hugh Bonser to repair it. He told her all, feeling that he had no alternative; she would not be content now, without the very fullest particulars. When he had finished, Marcia drew a long breath. His last words were entreaty a very humble entreaty, that she would permit him to burn the will, and let things remain as they had been since Captain Robert's death. She only shook her head.

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"It cannot be-you know it cannot be ! I should die if I had to keep such a secret; if I had to hold what was not my own. Robert, you MUST claim your rights. I shall see Marsland myself to-morrow."

"My rights! they are simply legal. And that which is legal is not always just. I am a rich man, Marcia, and I do not desire to heap up riches. Any further accession of wealth would be a pain, an intolerable burden. I would not bear it unless you shared it with me! Then, indeed, Marcia, I must break my promise; I must speak of my love again. If you will not remain queen-regent of Singlehurst, be

queen-consort, and make me happy. It will not matter then who is really heir."

"It cannot be, Robert! Now, more than ever, it cannot be!"

"You are hard, Marcia; you are cruel! You will force me to disinherit you; you will put upon me a load I cannot bear; and you will not love me!"

Marcia's eyes were shining through her tears as she replied, "You said you would make me love you, and I am afraid you have been as good as your word; but, for all that, I cannot marry you!"

ERMENGARDE was coming up the avenue just as Robert Carfax was going down it, consequently they met and stopped to speak. Marcia had told her cousin that Miss Liebrecht was aware of the " 'private business" to be discussed during her absence, and he saw in her eyes the question she was longing yet could not bring herself to ask.

"Yes," he said, answering her unspoken interrogations, "I have had to tell Marcia the whole truth. There was no keeping it from her. I did, by a mere chance, as it seemed, discover the secret of secrets which that wretched bureau concealed, and I did find in it the will which was searched for in vain after Captain Trevanion's death."

"And that will sets Marcia aside?"

"It gives her a handsome fortune, but not the estates of Singlehurst. When I say a handsome fortune I mean such a fortune as women who are not great heiresses commonly inherit, but, compared with the rent-roll of Singlehurst, it is insignificant enough. Miss Liebrecht, I need not tell you

that I never intended to profit by my discovery. I consulted Christopher, and he agreed with me that I had a right to suppress the will if I chose, since no one but myself was really concerned in it. The first and second wills, it seems, agree in all particulars save one; in the first, Marcia is named as lady of the manor, in the last the estates devolve upon— myself! Surely I had a right to reject possessions that I knew would entail upon me many pains and penalties ? And I knew my only chance of rejection was keeping silence; I could not really refuse, I could only avoid; and this is the result.”

“It has come so suddenly that I cannot realize it. Marcia not the lady of Singlehurst!"

"She will grieve me greatly, she will touch me to the quick, if she persists in giving up Singlehurst. If she will only keep the wretched secret! No one knows save you and Christopher-no one ever need know. If I am forced into the inheritance, I shall not retain it! I shall make it hers again by an immediate deed of gift."

"I am not quite sure that you could do that; and, if you could, I am certain Marcia would decline it. But, Mr. Carfax-forgive me-may it not some day belong to you both?"

"That is exactly what I wish; that is what I have pleaded for, but in vain. Marcia is inexorable. She admits that she cares for me; but she cannot, or will not, marry me. Now, more than ever, it cannot be, she says."

"Have patience. I begin to think that Marcia may be won in time. She does care for you, I am sure; only she has so thoroughly put the idea of a second attachment out of her head, that now that it presents itself she will not recognize it. She is no coquette-I need not tell you that; but she does not know her own heart. She will know it some day; she will acknowledge your power over her, and then-"

"And in the meantime I must turn her out of doors?" "Marcia will do just what she thinks is right. Also you

must concede something to her womanly pride. I scarcely think you will be able to prevail on her to stay at the Manor House. She would always feel that she was there on sufferance, that she owed all to your generosity."

"There would be no generosity in the case, not a spark, I am richer now than I care to be, if I am not to marry: the responsibility and burden of the Singlehurst estates would be intolerable. Also, it would be a misery to me to injure the woman I love-the only woman whom in all my life I have ever truly and deeply loved. It would be a torture to me to reign at Singlehurst Manor, to know that, however reluctantly, I had deposed her. Surely a more cruel fortune never befel a man!"

"It will all come right in the end. Your discovery was not a mere accident; it was 'ordered,' just as every other event of your life has been; and, perplexing as it seems now, it will work for good. Only you must trust, and have patience."

"It would all be so easy if Marcia would only consent to join her fortunes with mine. It would not matter then which of us was the legal inheritor of Singlehurst. But I will not despair: and you will be my friend, Miss Liebrecht ?"

"Undoubtedly; only I think you know enough of Marcia to perceive that in a case like this she will act quite independently. If you cannot influence her, no one else can. Therefore, do not expect that any interference of mine may advance your interests."

"I think I do understand Marcia, and I admire her firmness and strength of character. I like a woman who can, if need be, stand alone; but I like, too, that she should be content, under certain circumstances, to lean upon another -upon one whom she may trust, and who will never fail her while life lasts."

Half-an-hour afterwards Robert Carfax was pacing up and down a little wood that divided his own domain from an impertinent corner of Silverdale Park, that pushed itself like

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a long, narrow peninsula into the Dorsett Folly estate. He felt too excited to go home and sit down quietly in his study; he wanted to keep in motion, to stay in the open air; the very idea of being enclosed within four walls gave 'him a sense of suffocation.

It was a beautiful evening, soft and still, almost sultry. The acacia leaves were scarcely stirred, only the aspens quivered, as they have quivered, poor guilty trees, says the legend, for more than eighteen centuries! The sun had been below the horizon for an hour, but it was by no means dark ; the summer twilight still lingered, and the rosy flush had not yet faded from the western skies. There was a moon, too, rising solemnly over the woods, and touching with gold the massed foliage of the pines and feathery larches. Here and there shone out a pale star in the cloudless dome above, and here and there in the dewless grass a glowworm had kindled its tiny lamp. It was very pleasant in the wood, and Robert's footfall was noiseless on the soft carpeting of moss and withered fir-spines. It was a bye-path he had chosen, for the main path was a bridle-road, which led to a distant village, and was sometimes used by the Copley people.

It was not very likely that any one would be traversing it at that hour; but still some one might be crossing to Ferrersley, or to Sheepcote, and Robert was not in the mood to encounter any one. After he had had his talk with Ermengarde he longed for positive silence and solitude, and, as the best means of securing it, he turned into the coppice, and turned into a shaded, untrodden path, instead of going back to Dorsett's Folly.

It grew nearly dark in the wood, only the moon rose higher and chequered the mossy, leaf-strewn ground with slants of gleaming silver, and Mr. Carfax, tired at last of his perambulations, seated himself on the trunk of a felled tree, and began to think it would be only wise in a gentleman of his age and position to go home and go to bed. Suddenly he heard voices: two or more people were coming into the bridle-path which passed right through the centre of the