journey of more than two hundred and fifty
miles.

Rosamond met both these difficulties with
her usual directness and decision. The idea
of her husband travelling anywhere under
any circumstances, in his helpless dependent
state, without having her to attend on him,
she dismissed at once as too preposterous for
consideration. The second objection of
subjecting the child to the chances and fatigues
of a long journey, she met by proposing that
they should travel to Exeter at their own
time and in their own conveyance, and that
they should afterwards insure plenty of
comfort and plenty of room by taking a carriage
to themselves, when they reached the railroad
at Exeter. After thus smoothing away the
difficulties which seemed to set themselves in
opposition to the journey, she again reverted
to the absolute necessity of undertaking it.
She reminded Leonard of the serious interest
that they both had in immediately obtaining
Mrs. Jazeph's testimony to the genuineness
of the letter which had been found in the
Myrtle Room, as well as in ascertaining all
the details of the extraordinary fraud which
had been practised by Mrs. Treverton on her
husband. She pleaded also her own natural
anxiety to make all the atonement in her
power for the pain she must have
unconsciously inflicted, in the bedroom at West
Winston, on the person of all others whose
failings and sorrows she was most bound to
respect: and, having thus stated the motives
which urged her husband and herself to lose
no time in communicating personally with
Mrs. Jazeph, she again drew the inevitable
conclusion, that there was no alternative, in
the position in which they were now placed,
but to start forthwith on the journey to
London.

A little further consideration satisfied
Leonard, that the emergency was of such a
nature as to render all attempts to meet it
by half measures impossible. He felt that
his own convictions agreed with his wife's;
and he resolved accordingly to act at once,
without further indecision or further delay.
Before the evening was over, the servants
at Porthgenna were amazed by receiving
directions to pack the trunks for travelling,
and to order horses at the post-town for an
early hour the next morning.

On the first day of the journey, the
travellers started as soon as the carriage was
ready, rested on the road towards noon, and
remained for the night at Liskeard. On the
second day, they arrived at Exeter, and slept
there. On the third day, they reached London,
by the railway, between six and seven
o'clock in the evening.

When they were comfortably settled for
the night at their hotel, and when an hour's
rest and quiet had enabled them to recover a
little after the fatigues of the journey, Rosamond
wrote two notes under her husband's
direction. The first was addressed to Mr.
Buschmann: it simply informed him of their
arrival, and of their earnest desire to see him
at the hotel as early as possible the next morning;
and it concluded by cautioning him to
wait until he had seen them, before he
announced their presence in London to his
niece.

The second note was addressed to the
family solicitor, Mr. Nixon,—  the same
gentleman who, more than a year since, had
written, at Mrs. Frankland's request, the
letter which informed Andrew Treverton of
his brother's decease, and of the
circumstances under which the captain had died.
All that Rosamond now wrote, in her
husband's name and her own, to ask of Mr.
Nixon, was that he would endeavour to call
at their hotel on his way to business the next
morning, to give his opinion on a private
matter of great importance, which had obliged
them to undertake the journey from Porthgenna
to London. This note, and the note
to Uncle Joseph, were sent to their respective
addresses by a messenger, on the evening
when they were written.

The first visitor who arrived the next morning
was the solicitor,—a clear-headed, fluent,
polite old gentleman, who had known
Captain Treverton and his father before him.
He came to the hotel fully expecting to be
consulted on some difficulties connected with
the Porthgenna estate, which the local agent
was perhaps unable to settle, and which
might be of too confused and intricate a
nature to be easily expressed in writing.
When he heard what the emergency really
was, and when the letter that had
been found in the Myrtle Room, was placed
in his hands, it is not too much to say that
for the first time in the course of a long life
and a varied practice among all sorts and
conditions of clients, sheer astonishment
utterly paralysed Mr. Nixon's faculties, and
bereft him, for some moments, of the power
of uttering a single word.

When, however, Mr. Frankland proceeded
from making the disclosure to announcing his
resolution to give up the purchase-money of
Porthgenna Tower, if the genuineness of the
letter could be proved to his own satisfaction,
the old lawyer recovered the use of his
tongue immediately, and protested against
his client's intention with the sincere warmth
of a man who thoroughly understood the
advantage of being rich, and who knew what
it was to gain and to lose a fortune of forty
thousand pounds. Leonard listened with
patient attention, while Mr. Nixon argued
from his professional point of view, against
regarding the letter, taken by itself, as a
genuine document, and against accepting
Mrs. Jazeph's evidence, taken with it, as
decisive on the subject of Mrs. Frankland's
real parentage. He expatiated on the
improbability of Mrs. Treverton's alleged fraud
upon her husband having been committed,
without other persons, besides her maid and