'Indeed!' He had sat down again, overcome by his excitement and, as it seemed, depressed by the statement of her resolve, but now again he raised his head. How can you know if the money was paid anonymously?'

There are only two persons in the world, Mr. Pearson, in whose power it lay to do this thing; and I am sure it is not one of them. It must therefore be the other. It is Raymond Pennicuick.'

Mr. Pearson poured himself out a glass of water from a caraffe on the table, before he answered; and she noticed that his hand shook like a palsied man's.

'Well, my dear young lady, and why not? He has become, I suppose, a rich man. His father was a friend of your father's, and it is probable that before he died he enjoined this act upon his son. When he was alive, as I understand, he offered to pay you an annuity; and when about to die, it is comparatively easy even for a close-fisted man to be extremely liberal.'

Nelly shook her head. In that case Raymond would have told me, Mr. Pearson. He is not a man to take the credit of another's gift.'

'He has taken no credit to himself at all that I can see.'

It is the same thing. He must know that I should identify him with the giver; at all events—which is all that we need consider I have done so. Mr. Pearson,' Nelly went on, with quivering lips, it is fair, since I come to ask your counsel, it is only fair that I should have no secrets from you.'

Here that gentleman, softly rising, took the astonished Janet by the shoulder, and, opening the door of an inner apartment, put her quietly within it, and there left her.

'There was a time,' continued Nelly in low tones, when Raymond Pennicuick asked me to become his wife.'

'I have heard or guessed as much; and you refused him?'

Yes but not because I did not love him: it was because I would not be the cause of quarrel between him and his father. And now-I have thought of this, and put it from me, again and again—and, mind you, it is not like him; the suggestion I am about to make does his nature, so far as I have known it, grievous wrong; but the facts compel it-and now, I say, that he has become his own master, and the master of his father's wealth, he sends me this huge sum, without a line of explanation, or a word. of kindness.'

'Well?' for she paused--while the colour mounted to her forehead.

very

'You said, Mr. Pearson, there was such a thing as consciencemoney.'

6

'I see,' he answered gravely. You think he has sent you 21,000l. by way of compromise, because he does not mean to ask you again to be his wife.'

'Heaven forgive me if I wrong him,' answered Nelly, but so it seems.' She covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. 'My dear young lady, this must not be,' said Mr. Pearson tenderly. If this notion of yours is true, the man is not worth a thought, much less a tear. And if it is not true, we are, as you say, doing him grievous wrong in supposing it. As to his not coming to you, or writing to you, his position, after your rejection of him, is very delicate."

He wrote to me about the Dhulang matter,' sobbed poor Nelly. He is not like you; he can write if he chooses. You may say indeed that it is not to be expected with his father but a few days dead-but then, why have sent the money? He should have had no thought of money at such a time, but since he had '-she could say no more, but broke down utterly. For weeks she had not spoken to a friend; and weakened by solitude and helpless thought, this blow had fallen upon her-to be despised as she imagined (for in such sad straits we are apt to imagine slights) by the man she loved. Forgive me, sir, for I have no right to trouble you,' said she, recovering herself; 'you must blame your own kindness as much as my own selfishness; and, alas! I have no friend but you whose counsel I can ask on such a subject-you would not wish me now to touch that money, sir?'

No, my dear girl, I would not; no, no, no. degradation. But remember, we are not sure.'

That would be

That is what my heart says still, dear Mr. Pearson, but my reason contradicts it.'

so.

• Then your heart is still his?' put in the other gravely.

'I did not say so,' said she passionately; 'I never told himself That is nothing now. What I came here to ask you for is counsel. What am I to say, what am I to do? To draw a cheque for this huge sum, and then return it, would be the simplest way; but then if by any chance it should not be Raymond!'

Mr. Pearson rose and began to pace the room uneasily. It is a difficult question, my dear girl: there is, as you say, a possibility— and to suggest such a gift, if undesigned, would be intolerable. Are you sure that there is no other friend who has this power?'

For an instant her thoughts flew to Herbert Milburn; he was rich, he had loved her with an unselfish love, and he had departed (Mrs. Wardlaw said because Nelly had rejected him) to a foreign

land. Being without hope of her, it was just within possibility that his generosity of soul might have dictated such an act: it was not vanity that suggested this, but simply that the affair was so extraordinary that it evaded all reasonable solution, and yet she felt a sense of shame at having entertained such a conjecture. I am quite sure.' 'Will you promise not to move in the matter until I have thought over it-until I see you again?'

'No, there is no other,' said she at last.

"I will, dear Mr. Pearson. But I entreat you, do not delay your decision. So long as I hold this money in possession it is as molten gold to the hand that clasps it.'

Then she thanked him warmly and took her leave, not without more tears, for her nerves were greatly shaken.

When his visitor was gone, Mr. Pearson too, strange to say, showed more signs of emotion than when she had been present. He continued to pace his room, though it was plain the exertion wearied him, while frequent mutterings showed his brain was busy in her behalf. Poor girl, dear girl,' would drop from his white lips in accents of tenderest pity; then they would grow rigid, as he murmured Right is Right'; and then again Dead, Dead! what profit though the tree be fallen, if we miss the fruit?'

CHAPTER XLVIII.

A MYSTERY.

It was not Raymond Pennicuick's fault that his father died, as such men mostly do die, without friends or kin about him, and with hireling hands to close his eyes. Raymond was dutiful enough, and none the less so though the confession Ralph Pennicuick had made had, as he had himself foreseen, deprived his son of his dearest hope. He would have continued to remain under the sick man's roof and to have tended him with all care and gentleness, but that the patient himself had expressed a wish to the contrary. From the moment he had entrusted his shameful secret to his son, he had resumed towards him his old manner; he had become cynical, suspicious, hard, again, so far at least as his waning powers permitted him to be; where he had been violent, he was irritable; where he had been caustic, he was curt and peevish. Perhaps he regretted his confession; perhaps he resented the fact that Raymond possessed his secret, and would fain show him that in spite of that Ralph Pennicuick was master still. At all events, that momentary flow of natural tenderness had stopped, having perhaps exhausted the reservoir.

Thus it happened that when the end came, which it did a few days after the interview we have recorded, the dying man was attended by Hatton only. The Doctor and Raymond were of course sent for, but arrived too late to find him alive. He had made some movement which had roused his servant, who was sleeping in a chair by the bedside. He had raised himself on his elbow and was looking straight before him in a manner which Hatton described as 'unked '-the vulgar English for uncanny.' 'I am coming,' said he, in tones that despite their weakness were still harsh and resolute.

'Master, what is it?' inquired Hatton.

'It is Death,' was the calm reply; I am about to meet him face to face."

And it was Death.

Who it was that Ralph Pennicuick was about to meet, the man of course did not know, though he knew enough of his master's opinions to feel sure that he was not referring to the Eternal Judge.

That's what he said, Mr. Raymond; "I am about to meet him face to face;" only those words and no more, and then he fell back, and I saw by his looks that it was all over.'

Raymond knew whom his father had felt he was about to meet only too well, and those last words spurred on a purpose with which his mind had been busy for many a day. That very evening Raymond sent for Mr. Tatham and said, 'You must procure me one-and-twenty thousand pounds at once-for there was interest to be paid on that shameful debt as well as the principal.

The lawyer stood aghast, as well he might; he had not been unaccustomed to the spectacle of a greedy heir, but such a request as this at such a time surpassed all his experience: to hear it, too, from the lips of Raymond Pennicuick of all men, fairly astonished him.

"Good heavens, sir, when the breath is scarce out of your father's body!'

He was my father, not yours!' cried Raymond, with a look and tone that reminded the lawyer of Ralph himself; what I ask of you is, not your approval, but the thing itself."

But, sir, the will has not been read, or rather we do not know for certain that there is no will.'

You do know that. If you cannot raise this money immediately at once-I can find those who can, though I pay twice as much for it a fortnight hence. I tell you I must have it.'

And somehow or other Mr. Tatham contrived, within a marvellously short time, and doubtless at some considerable cost, to get it. Then, by his client's directions, he paid it with all

possible secrecy into Miss Ellen Conway's account at her banker's. Raymond thought it better for Nelly's sake that it should be done through him than to select any other confidant. 'I am at liberty,' he said, 'to tell you this much and no more, Mr. Tatham, that in paying this money I am only discharging a just debt.'

The lawyer bowed, and, being an astute man, never again so much as referred to the question of value received.'

6

From that moment a great weight was lifted off Raymond's mind, but it was still very far from being at peace. He had inherited something else besides his father's money-the sense of his shameful conduct. The knowledge of the evil he had wrought on his dead friend, and of his subsequent baseness, affected him as though it were a taint in his blood. To hear his father spoken of, even in the way of condolement with himself, was distressing to him; such words were to his ears not even the vacant chaff well meant for grain,' they were smooth lies, probably known to be such by the speakers themselves, but at all events known so to be sometimes by him. It was still worse to hear the dead man spoken of, as he did, with that frankness used by men of the world, who had once called themselves his friends. In a railway carriage one day, not long after the funeral, he had heard two such men, known to him by sight, though he was a stranger to them, discussing his father's character.

"They used to call him Steel Pen, you know,' said one; and indeed he was a man of iron every way-including his heart.'

'But it seems he broke up at last; we may be sure, however, he never melted.'

'He is melting now, if there's any truth in what the parsons say,' and then they both laughed aloud.

It matters nothing to us, probably, what men may say of us when we have played our parts in this world, but it does matter, sometimes, to those who belong to and survive us; and even for their sakes it behoves us to leave a decent memory.

There were other things, too, that embittered Raymond Pennicuick's life, though to the world it seemed incredible that, being young and prosperous, and having got rid of that incubus his father, he could be otherwise than happy. He had given up all hopes of Nelly Conway. It would probably have seemed to him, in any case, with his scrupulous notions of right and his keen sense of what was becoming, that he must withdraw his pretensions in that quarter after what had happened; that, being who he was, he could not marry her father's daughter; but at all events the opinion of Ralph Pennicuick himself had settled that matter for his son.

If such a union seemed to his father's eyes to be impossible