the condition that you keep it strictly to
yourself for the present."

"A secret? No, no, no! For Heaven's
sake give me no more secrets to carry about
with me!"

"This cannot be a secret long," answered
Mr. Frost. Then he told her with great
clearness and accuracy, the story of his
acquaintance with Barletti, of Veronica's
marriage on board the ship of war at Naples,
and of the subsequent sudden death of Sir
John Gale, and the finding of the will.

Mrs. Lockwood listened with ever deepening
attention. When he came to the
contents of the will, she removed the hand
which had hitherto covered her mouth,
and let it fall on the table.

"Was the will witnessed—duly made
out—was it a legal document?" she asked.

"It was unimpeachably correct, and
unusually clear and brief."

"Then, Maud Desmond is a great
heiress!" She sat very still, and spoke
very quietly, but an unusual flush suffused
her pale face, and the blue veins in the little
worn hand that lay on the table swelled,
revealing the force with which she was
pressing it down.

"I cannot tell you whether she is, or not.
But you can tell me."

"I? I can tell you?"

"A true marriage invalidates a will: a
false one does not. If there were still any
breath in the body of Hilda, Lady Tallis
Gale, at a quarter past ten o'clock on the
morning of Tuesday, the fourth of March,
the will is good, the second marriage
is void, and your son's wife is one of the
wealthiest women in this kingdom."

Zillah gave a great sigh. Her hands
dropped nervelessly into her lap, and she
sank back in her chair staring at Mr. Frost
in silence.

CHAPTER II. MRS. LOCKWOOD'S MEMORY.

HUGH returned from Lowater House on
the day after Mr. Frost's interview with
his mother. Mr. Levincourt was still in
London, but intended to return home by
the end of the week. The vicar's consent
to his ward's engagement had been given
before Lady Tallis's illness had begun
to display cause for immediate alarm.
The vicar had been once to London since
the terrible journey when he had taken
Maud to her aunt; having been summoned
thither by Lady Tallis's urgent request that
she might have an opportunity of speaking
to him about Maud.

"I cannot put all that I want to say upon
paper," she wrote. And indeed the poor
lady's epistolary style did not improve
with years.

When the vicar arrived, in compliance
with Lady Tallis's entreaty, she urged him
not to oppose the wishes of the young
people.

"If you do not object, Lady Tallis," said
Mr. Levincourt, " I suppose I cannot do
so, either."

"It is not what Maud might have
expected, if things had been different with
me," the poor lady observed. "But what
has the child to look to? Sir Thomas
Delaney has eight children, six of 'em
daughters! So it isn't very likely he'll do
anything for Maudie. And you know, my
dear friend, birth and riches don't always
make marriages happy. Goodness knows
I had the first. At least poor papa always
would be telling us that his was some of
the best blood in Ireland—not literally, of
course, ye understand: for the fact is, he
suffered a martyrdom from gout all his life.
But what did my birth do for me? And as
to money—well to be sure, I'd like to have
a little more of that to do as I like with!
But still money won't buy the best things.
Now at one time I had more than I knew
what to do with—in the early days, ye know
—but I'd a thousand million times sooner
have my dear girl to be kind to me and be
poor, than be as rich as a Begum without a
soul that cared a quarter of a straw about
me; and that brings me round to what I
was saying to ye, that it would be a pity to
lose a good husband for our dear Maud, just
for a bit of family pride. I've reflected a
good deal about it lately, my dear friend.
And ye know good husbands don't grow
on every bush!

The vicar had no personal wish to oppose
the engagement. He liked Hugh, and
thought well of him. And, besides, there was
another feeling in his mind which tended
to make him favourable to the engagement.
He had never lost the conviction that
Maud's mother would have been a happier
woman as the wife of a certain poor clergyman
whom she loved, than it was possible
for her to have been under any
circumstances of loveless prosperity. And he had
a vague notion that in forbearing to oppose
Maud's love-match, he was making a kind
of reparation for the share he had had in
destroying her mother's young romance in
the days when Clara Delaney had wandered
with him under the old trees in her Irish
home, and dreamed her girlish dream of
unworldly happiness.