CHAPTER IX.
A STARTLED LUNCHEON-TABLE.

The luncheon was laid in a low room, with a beam running across the ceiling; the walls, once bright with red flock paper and much gilding, were soiled and dull now, after the manner of a great many of our dining-rooms. Squire Carr took the head of the table. He apologised for the fare: cold veal, ham (which Benjamin, who sat at the foot of the table, carved), and salad. The squire's daughters did not appear at it. There were too many of them, he said to Robert; but Mrs. Lewis, who had just come over from Westerbury by the train, did. She was a big woman, with little eyes like the squire's, and a large face—the latter very red just now, through her mile-and-a-half walk in the sun from Eckford. She turned her back on the young clergyman when he said grace, as though he had no business there. Benjamin had whispered to her who he was, and the search of the marriage register books that was in prospect; and Mrs. Lewis resented it visibly. She had no mind to give up that bijou of a house just entered upon. She believed she should have trouble enough with her father to keep it, without another opponent coming into the field.

"What brings you over to-day, Emma?" asked the squire of Mrs. Lewis, as the meal proceeded. "Anything turned up?"

A rather ambiguous question, the latter one, to uninitiated ears; but the squire had been burning to put it, and Mrs. Lewis understood. He looked covertly at her for a moment with his blinking eyes, and then dropped them again.

"I only came over to see Ben, papa," she answered. "The news reached me this morning that he had come home. I have not had time to do anything yet."

Now, the fact was, Squire Carr had placed his daughter, knowing her admirable ferreting propensities, in Marmaduke Carr's house for one sole purpose—that of visiting its every hole and corner. "There may be a will," the squire had said to himself, in his caution, several times since the death. "I don't think there is; I could stake a great deal that there is not, for Marmaduke was not likely to make one; but it's as well to be on the safe side, and such things have been heard of as wills hid away in houses." And when the squire saw Mrs. Lewis, whom he had not expected that day, he began to fear that something of the sort had "turned up." The relief was great.

"Oh, to see Ben. You'll see enough of him, I expect, before he's off again."

The squire looked up with a sort of start. He remembered the letter written by "Emma Carr, née D'Estival." Of course! she was this young man's wife.

"You look young to have a wife," was all the squire said.

"You look, to me, as if you had no business with one at all," added Mrs. Lewis with blunt plainness. "Sickly men should be cautious how they marry, lest they leave their wives widows. I have been so left. I threw aside my widow's cap only last week."

Robert Carr explained to them what his hurt had been, and how his chest had suffered at times since. He was aware he looked unusually ill just now, he said; but he had looked just as much so about a year and a half before—had coughed also. He should get well now, he supposed, like he did then. For one thing, speaking of his present looks, this matter was harassing him a good deal, and there had been his father's sudden death.

"Oh, by the way, Mr. Arkell, let me ask you something," exclaimed Mrs. Lewis suddenly. "I have heard the strangest thing. That a gentleman, a Mr. Dundas, or some such name, had been drowned or murdered, or something, at Geneva; a relative of your wife's. What is the truth of it?"

"That is the truth, as far as we can learn it," replied Mr. Arkell. "It was Mr. Dundyke, the husband of Mrs. Arkell's sister. You saw her once, I know, at my mother's house, a great many years ago; she was Miss Betsey Travice then——"

"But about the murder?" interrupted Mrs. Lewis. "Was he murdered? Roland ran home from Mr. Wilberforce's for a minute last night, and I heard it from him. I think he said the young Prattletons told him. I know he was quite up in arms about it. What is it?"

Mr. Arkell pointed to Robert Carr. "That gentleman can tell you better than I can," he said. "He heard the particulars from Mrs. Dundyke herself. I only heard them from Mr. Prattleton secondhand."

"I suppose you want me to tell the story, instead of yourself," said Robert Carr, with a glance and a smile at Mr. Arkell. "Mr. Prattleton was on the spot, and instituted the search, so his information cannot be secondhand."

They began it between them, but Mr. Arkell gradually ceased, and left it to Robert Carr. It appeared to take a singular hold on the squire's interest. He had just asked his son for more ham, but was too absorbed to send his plate for it. Ben held the slice between his knife and fork, and had to let it drop at last.

"Then he was not murdered!" exclaimed Mrs. Lewis. "It was only a case of drowning, after all!"

"Of drowning," assented Robert Carr. "At least that is the most probable supposition."

"It may rather be called at present a case of mysterious disappearance, as the sensational weekly papers would phrase it," interposed Mr. Arkell, speaking again. "Mrs. Dundyke at one time felt convinced that a murder had been committed, as Mr. Prattleton tells me, and afterwards modified her opinion. Now she feels her doubts renewed again."

"What a shocking thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Lewis. "And who does she think murdered him—if he was murdered?"

"The Mr. Hardcastle of whom mention has been made. Mrs. Dundyke has discovered that he was an impostor."

"Has she!" exclaimed Robert Carr.

"Mr. Prattleton heard from her by last evening's post, and he came in late, and showed me her letters," said Mr. Arkell. "This man, Hardcastle, had passed himself off as being a partner of the great Hardcastle house in Leadenhall-street—a nephew of its head and chief—whereas he turns out to be entirely unknown to them."

"And she thinks he did the murder?" quickly cried Mrs. Lewis, who was possessed of all a woman's curiosity on such subjects.

"She thinks the suspicions look very dark against him," said Mr. Arkell. "I confess I think the same."

"But I thought Mr. Carr, here, said she had completely exonerated this Mr. Hardcastle!" cried the squire. "Be quiet, Emma; you would let nobody speak but yourself, if you had your way."

"So I believe she did exonerate him," returned Mr. Arkell; "but in all cases the same facts wear so different an aspect, according to their attendant surroundings. When Mr. Hardcastle was supposed to be Mr. Hardcastle, one of the chief partners of the great East India house, the nephew of its many-years' chief, it was almost impossible to suppose that he could have committed the murder, however little trifling circumstances might seem to give point to the suspicion. But when we know that this man was not Mr. Hardcastle, but an impostor—probably a chevalier d'industrie, travelling about to see what prey he could bring down—those same trifling circumstances change into alarming facts, every one of which bears its own significance."

"I don't clearly understand what the facts were," said the squire. "He borrowed money, didn't he?"

"He borrowed money—twenty pounds; he would have borrowed a hundred, but Mr. Dundyke had it not with him. He, poor Mr. Dundyke, was utterly taken in by them from the first—never had a shadow of suspicion that anything was wrong; Mrs. Dundyke, on the contrary, tells Mr. Prattleton that she had. She feels quite sure that their running account at the hotel, for which she knows they were pressed, was paid with that twenty pounds, or part of it; and she says they——"

"In saying 'they,' of whom do you speak besides Mr. Hardcastle?" asked the squire.

"Of his wife. And Mrs. Dundyke did not like her. But let us come to the day of the disappearance. On that morning, as they sat at breakfast, Mr. Dundyke told Mr. Hardcastle that he was about to leave; and that some money he had written for, notes for thirty pounds, had come that morning—were inclosed in two letters which Mr. Hardcastle saw him receive and put in his pocket. Mrs. Dundyke says that she shall never forget the strangely eager glance—something like a wolf's when it scents prey—that he cast on Mr. Dundyke at mention of the thirty pounds. Mr. Dundyke went out alone, and hired a boat, as you have heard; and they afterwards saw him on the lake bearing away to the spot where he landed; Mr. Hardcastle saw him, and then walked away. Nothing more was seen of either of them until dinner-time, six o'clock, when Mr. Hardcastle returned; he came creeping into the house as if he wished to shun observation, travel-soiled, dusty, his face scratched, his hand hurt—just as if he had been taking part in some severe struggle; and Mrs. Dundyke is positive that his face turned white when she rushed up and asked where her husband was."

"Did she suspect him then?"

"Oh dear no; not with the faintest suspicion. That same night she heard a fearful quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle; weepings, lamentings, reproaches from Mrs. Hardcastle, ill-language from him; and twice she heard her husband's name mentioned. She told Mr. Prattleton subsequently that it was just as though the fact of the murder had been then disclosed to Mrs. Hardcastle, and she, the wife, had received it with a storm of horror and reproach. But the most suspicious circumstance was the pencil-case."

"What was that?" came the eager question from the squire and his daughter, for this had not yet been named.

"Well, what Mr. Prattleton tells me is this," said Mr. Arkell. "When Mr. Dundyke went out in the boat he had his pencil-case with him; Mrs. Dundyke saw him return it to his pocket-book the last thing before leaving the breakfast-room, and put the book in his pocket. It was the same pocket-book in which he had just placed the letters containing the bank-notes. The pencil-case was silver; it had been given to Mr. Dundyke by my cousin Mildred, and had his initials upon it; Mrs. Dundyke says he never carried any other—had not, she feels convinced, any other with him that morning. After he had landed on the opposite side of the lake, he must have made use of this pencil to write the note, which note he sent back to the hotel by the boatmen. So that it appears to be a pretty certain fact that, whatever evil overtook Mr. Dundyke, this pencil must have been about him. Do you follow me?"

"Yes, yes," answered the squire, testily. He did not like the narrative to be interrupted by so much as a thread.

"Good. But this same pencil-case was subsequently found in Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle's room at the hotel."

"What!" exclaimed Benjamin Carr, looking up as if startled to sudden interest.

"The droll question is, how did it come there?" continued Mr. Arkell. "It was found in the room the Hardcastles had occupied at the hotel. They had left there some days; had gone on, they said, to Genoa. Mr. Prattleton's daughter was put in this room after their departure, and the silver pencil-case was picked up from behind the drawers. Mr. Prattleton and Mrs. Dundyke were in the chamber at the time, and the latter was dreadfully agitated; she quite startled him, he says, by saying that Mr. Hardcastle must have murdered her husband."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Squire Carr. "I see. The pencil-case which was lost with Mr. Dundyke reappeared in their room! How very strange! I should have had the man apprehended."

"The hypothesis of course is, that Mr. Hardcastle had in some manner possessed himself of the things the missing man had about his person," pursued Mr. Arkell. "Mr. Prattleton thought at the time that this could perhaps have been explained away. I mean the finding of the pencil-case—that Mr. Dundyke might have dropped it on going out from breakfast, and the other have picked it up; but since the arrival of Mrs. Dundyke's letter yesterday, he says he does not like the look of it at all."

"And the bank-notes that Mr. Dundyke had undoubtedly about his person were found to have been changed the subsequent day in Geneva," spoke up Robert Carr. "The money-changer thought they had been changed by a man whose appearance agreed with that of Mr. Hardcastle. And then there was the testimony of the Swiss peasant."

"What was the testimony?" asked the squire.

"A peasant, or small farmer, testified that he saw two gentlemen together walking away from the direction of the lake on the day of the disappearance; and in describing them, he exactly described the persons and dress of Mr. Hardcastle and Mr. Dundyke. I told Mrs. Dundyke," added the clergyman, "that I did not like her account of this Mr. Hardcastle; and she had expressed to me no suspicion of him then."

"And why did they not cause him to be apprehended?" asked the squire. "There could not well be a clearer case. I have committed many a man upon half the evidence. What sort of a man was he in person, this Hardcastle?"

"A tall, strong man, very dark; a fine man, Mrs. Dundyke says. I should think," added the clergyman, ranging his eyes around, lest haply he might find anyone in the present company to illustrate his meaning by ever so slight a likeness, as we are all apt to do in trying to describe a stranger—"I should think——"

Robert Carr stopped; his eyes were resting on the white face of Benjamin Carr. Those sallow, dark faces when they turn white are not pleasant to look upon.

"I should think," he continued, "that he must have been some such a man as your son here, sir. Yes, just such another; tall, strong, dark——"

"How dare you?" shouted Benjamin Carr, with a desperate oath. "How dare you point at me as the—the—as Mr. Hardcastle?"

The whole table bounded to their feet as if electrified. Benjamin had risen to his full height; his eyes glared on the clergyman; his fist was lifted menacingly to his face. Had he gone out of his senses? Some of them truly thought so. That he had momentarily allowed himself to lose his presence of mind, there could be no question.

"What on earth has taken you, Ben?"

The words came from Mrs. Lewis. Her brother's demeanour had been puzzling her. He had sat, with that one slight interruption mentioned, with his head down, looking sullen, as if he took no interest in the narrative; and she had seen his face grow whiter and whiter. She supposed it to be caused by the story; and said to herself, that she should not have thought Ben was chicken-hearted.

The squire followed suit. "Have you taken leave of your senses, sir? What's the matter with you? What is it, I say?"

"Your visitor offended me, sir," replied Benjamin Carr, slowly sitting down in his chair again, and beginning to recollect himself. "How dare he say that I bear a resemblance to this Hardcastle?"

"He never did say it," angrily returned the squire. "If you cause such a startling interruption at my table again, I shall request you to think twice before you sit down to it."

Mrs. Lewis was staring at her brother with a sort of wondering stare. Mr. Arkell could not make him out; and the young clergyman stood perfectly confounded. Altogether, Benjamin Carr was under a sea of keen eyes; and he knew it.

"I'm sure I beg your pardon if my words offended you," began Robert Carr. "I meant no offence. I only wished to convey an impression of what this Mr. Hardcastle was like—a tall, fine, dark man, as described to me. I never saw him. The same description would apply to thousands of men."

"I thought you did intend offence," said Benjamin Carr in a distinct tone. "Your words and manner implied it, at any rate."

"Don't show yourself a fool, Benjamin," cried out the squire. "I shall begin to think you are one. The clergyman no more meant to liken you to the man, than he meant to liken me; he was only trying to describe the sort of person. What has taken you? You must have grown desperately thin-skinned all on a sudden."

"Can't you let it drop?" said Benjamin, angrily. The squire sent up his plate as he spoke, for the ham that had been waiting all this while; perhaps by way of creating a divertissement; and Ben lifted the slice with a jerk, and then jerked the knife and fork down again. Mrs. Lewis, who had never come out of the prolonged stare, apparently arrived now at the solution of the problem.

"I know what it is, Ben," she quietly said. "This Hardcastle must be an acquaintance of yours. You know you do pick up all sorts of——"

"It is a lie," interrupted Ben, regardless of his good manners.

"Papa"—turning to the squire—"rely upon it I am right. Ben no doubt fell in with this Hardcastle on his travels, grew intimate with him, and now does not like to hear him aspersed."

"Be quiet, Emma," cried Ben, but his voice was lowered now, as if with concentrated passion, or policy. "You talk like a fool."

"Well, perhaps I do," retorted Mrs. Lewis, "but I think it is as I say for all that. You would not put yourself out like this for nothing. I dare say you did know the man; it was just the time that you were at Geneva."

"I was not at Geneva."

"You were at Geneva," she persisted. "You know you wrote home from thence."

"Why yes, of course you did, Ben," added the squire. "Valentine showed us the letter: you said you were hard up in it. But that's nothing new."

"I swear that I never saw this Hardcastle in my life," said Ben Carr, his white face turning to a dusky red. "What time did this affair happen?" he continued, suddenly addressing Mr. Arkell. "If I had been in Geneva at the time, I must have heard of it."

"I can tell you," said Robert Carr. "Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke went to Geneva the middle of July, and this must have happened about the second week in August."

Benjamin Carr poured himself out a glass of wine as he listened. He was growing cool and collected again.

"Ah, I thought I could not have been there. I went to Geneva the latter part of June. I and a fellow were taking a walking tour together. We stayed there a few days, and left it for Savoy the first week in July. I think I did write to Valentine while I was there. All these people, that you speak of, must have arrived afterwards."

"Then did you not see this Mr. Hardcastle, Ben?" asked his sister.

"I tell you, no! I never saw or heard of him in my life."

"Then why need you have flown out so?"

"Well, one does not like to be compared to a—murderer. Some of you had been calling him one."

No more was said. But the hilarity (if there had been any) of the meeting was taken away, and Robert Carr rose to leave. He had a little business to do in Westerbury yet, he said, and must go back that night to London. The squire was the only one who showed courtesy in the farewell. Benjamin was sullenly resentful still; Mrs. Lewis haughty and indifferent.

"Is he quite in his right mind?" Robert Carr asked of Mr. Arkell, as they drove out of the avenue.

"Who?—Benjamin Carr? Oh yes, he is right enough. He is as sharp as a needle."

"Then what could have caused him to break out in the manner he did? I never was so taken to in my life."

"I don't know," said Mr. Arkell; "it is puzzling me still. But for his very emphatic denial, I should assume it to be as Mrs. Lewis suggested—that he must have got acquainted with this Hardcastle, and did not like to hear any ill of him."

Before starting for London that night, Robert Carr paid a visit to Mr. Fauntleroy. It was after office hours, but that gentleman received him in his drawing-room. One of Mr. Fauntleroy's daughters, a buxom damsel on the same large scale as her father, was thumping through some loud piece on the piano. She satisfied her curiosity by a good look at the intruder, as all Westerbury would like to have done, for his name had been in men's mouths that day, and then retired with a good-humoured smile and nod, carrying her piece of music.

"Bab!" called out the lawyer.

Miss Fauntleroy came back. "Did you speak, pa?"

"Don't go strumming that in the next room. This gentleman has perhaps called to talk on matters of business."

She threw down the music with a laugh: gave another good-natured nod to Robert, and finally quitted the room.

"Mr. Fauntleroy, I have come—but I ought first to apologize for calling at this hour, but I am going off at once to London—I have come to ask if you will act for me as my legal adviser?"

Mr. Fauntleroy made a momentary pause. "Do you mean generally, or in any particular cause?"

"I mean in this, my cause. I require some solicitor to take it up at once, and serve a notice of ejectment on Squire Carr, from the possession of the property he has assumed. I suppose that would be the first legal step; but you will know what to do better than I. As the many years solicitor to my grandfather, I thought you might perhaps have no objection to become mine."

"I have no objection in the world," said Mr. Fauntleroy. "But, my good sir—and this, mind you, is disinterested advice—I would recommend you to pause before you enter on any such contest. There's not a shadow of chance that the property can be wrested from Squire Carr, so long as your father's marriage remains a doubt. It is his by law."

"I do not think there is a shadow of doubt that the proofs of the marriage will be found, and speedily. I go up to London to search. Meanwhile you will be so kind as act just as you would act were the proofs in your hand. I will not allow Squire Carr to retain, by ever so short a time, the property unmolested, or to fancy he retains it," continued the young man, in some emotion. "Every hour that he does so is a reflection on my mother's name."

"But—yes, that's all very well, very dutiful—but where's the use of entering on a contest certain to be lost?"

"It is certain to be gained; I know the proofs will be forthcoming."

"The most prudent plan will be to wait until they are," returned the lawyer. He was not usually so considerate for his clients; but this, as he looked upon it, was a hopeless case, one that nobody, many degrees removed from a fool, would venture upon.

"No," said Robert Carr, "I will not wait a day. Be so kind as take proper steps at once, Mr. Fauntleroy."

"Very well; if you insist upon it. It will cost money, you know."

"That shall be placed in your hands as soon as I can send the necessary instructions to Rotterdam. What sum shall you require?"

"Oh, suppose you let me have fifty pounds at first. Before that's expended, perhaps—perhaps some decision may have been come to."

Had Mr. Fauntleroy spoken the words on his tongue, they would have run, "perhaps you will have come to your senses."

"I will spare no expense on this cause; any money you want, you shall have, only my right must be maintained against the other branch of the family. Do you understand me, Mr. Fauntleroy?"

"I do; and I must ask you to understand me, and to remember later that I did not advise this. If the proofs of the marriage shall come to light, why, then of course the tables will be turned."

"By the way," said Robert Carr, "I have never asked what amount of money my grandfather has left?"

"Not much less than the value of twenty thousand pounds, taking it in the aggregate. He did not live up to his income, and it accumulated. There are several houses; the one he resided in is a beautiful little place. You have not been inside it?"

"No; I met Mrs. Lewis to-day, at the squire's, and I thought she might have invited me to see it," added Robert Carr. "But she did not."

"No danger; they'll keep you at arm's length, if they can. Well, Mr. Carr, you will not forget what I say, that I do not advise you to enter on this contest. And should you, after a day or two's reflection, think better of it, there's no harm done. Just drop me a line to say so, that's all. I won't charge you for my advice."

Robert could not smile, he was too serious. "And if you receive the money from me, instead of the letter you suggest, you will immediately commence this action; is that an understood thing between us, Mr. Fauntleroy?"

"It is," said Mr. Fauntleroy; "it will cost a mint of money, mind you, if it goes on to trial."

Robert Carr said no more; he was satisfied. As he went down the richly-carpeted stairs, two large female heads, and two coarsely-handsome, good-natured faces were propelled over the balustrades, to gaze after him: the heads and the faces of the Miss Fauntleroys.

CHAPTER X.
A MISSIVE FOR SQUIRE CARR.

Domestic relations did not progress very pleasantly at Squire Carr's. It was the old story; the old grievance; the one that had disturbed the internal economy of the home ever since Benjamin became a grown man: Benjamin required money, and the squire protested he had it not to give. Ben, he said, wanted to ruin him.

This time Ben had come home particularly out at elbows, metaphorically speaking; literally, he was, in regard to clothes, rather better off than usual. Ben had quitted his home the previous April, with a very fair sum of money in his pocket, drawn from the squire; where he had spent the time since was not very clear, unless he had been, as the squire expressed it, dodging about the continent; two or three letters having been received from him at long intervals, dated from different parts of it. Ben was not accustomed to be particularly communicative on the subject of his own wanderings; and all he said now was, that he had made a "pedestrian tour." One other thing was a vast deal more clear—that he had brought back empty pockets.

He was now worrying the squire to advance him funds for a visit to Australia, where he should be sure to make his fortune. Three or four fellows, whom he knew, were going, he said; they had a fine prospect before them, and he had the opportunity offered him of joining them. The worrying had begun on the very evening subsequent to the visit of Mr. Arkell and Robert Carr; a week or more had gone on since; and Ben systematically continued his importunities. The squire turned a stone-deaf ear. Ben had once before got money from him to make his fortune in Australia; and had come home after a two years' absence without a shirt to his back: Squire Carr must live to be an older man than he was now, before he forgot that. Valentine Carr put in his voice against it; he had for a long while been angrily resentful at these sums of money being advanced to Ben, far larger ones, he suspected, than the reigning powers allowed to come to his knowledge; and he was now raising his voice in opposition. He was the heir; and the estate, he said, was already impoverished too much.

One cloudy Saturday morning, close, hot, and unhealthy, Valentine Carr was mounting his horse to go to Westerbury. They had breakfasted early; breakfast was always taken early at the squire's, but especially so on Saturdays, the market day at Westerbury. Squire Carr was standing by his son, giving him various directions.

"You'll see how prices run to-day, Valentine; but mark you, I'll not sell a sheaf of the old corn if the market's flat. And the new you need not think of soliciting offers for, for I shall not sell yet awhile. The barley market ought to be brisk to-day; some of the maltsters, I hear, are already preparing to steep; and you may, perhaps, get rid of some loads. Have you the samples?"

Valentine Carr dived with one hand into his capacious pocket, by way of answer, and just showed some three or four little bags tied round with tape.

"You'll get first prices, mind, or you won't sell. Not a farmer in all the county can show better barley this year than ours. Do you hear?"

"I know," ungraciously returned Valentine. "I believe you think I'm a child still. I can't ride off to market without you, but you go on at me in this fashion: and it's nigh upon thirty years now since I went first."

"I know my own business better than anybody, and I can't afford to let things go below their value," rejoined the squire. "A halfpenny a bushel would make a difference to me now, and I should feel it. I'm shorter of money than I ought to be."

"Money goes in many ways that it ought not to go in," said Valentine, gathering up his bridle with a sniff. And the squire knew that it was a side-thrust at Ben. "Anything more?"

"You had better call on Emma, and ask whether she has made a list of the plate and pictures. If she has not, you may tell her that I shall come over next week and go over the things for myself. She might have sent it to me days ago. I'll not have so much as a plated spoon omitted, and so I told her. That's all."

Valentine Carr touched his horse and rode at a quick trot down the avenue. When the squire looked round, he found Benjamin—who had just got down to breakfast—at his side.

"We shall have a nasty, hot, muggy day, Ben!"

"Yes," said Ben, "we get these days sometimes in September. Father, if you won't let me have the two hundred, will you let me have one? I don't want to lose this chance, and my friends will have sailed. They are putting in three hundred each, but——"

"How many times are you going to tell me that?" interrupted the squire. "I don't believe it; no, I don't believe you have any friends who are possessed of three hundred to put. It is of no use your bothering, Ben; I haven't got the money to spare."

"Not got it to spare, when you have just come in to twenty thousand pounds!" returned Ben, not, however, venturing to speak in any tone but a conciliating one. "I only wish I had come in to a tithe of it! It was a slice of good luck that you never expected, squire, and you might be generous enough to help me once again."

In truth, the good luck had been so entirely unlooked for, that Squire Carr could not find in his heart to snub Ben for saying so, quite as fiercely as he might otherwise have done. "It was just a chance, Ben, Robert Carr's dying as he did."

"A very good chance for us. Look here, father: I can't stop on here, nagged at by Valentine, out of purse, out of your favour——"

"Whose fault is it that you are out of my favour?" interrupted the squire, taking off his old drab wide-awake to straighten a dent in the brim.

"Well, I suppose it's mine," acknowledged Ben. "What is a hundred pounds to the twenty thousand you have come into? A drop of water in the ocean."

"And if you got the hundred pounds and started with it, you'd be writing home in three months for another hundred! It has always been the case, Ben."

The words seemed to imply symptoms of so great a concession, compared to the positive refusal hitherto accorded him, that Ben Carr's hopes went up like a sky-rocket. He saw the hundred pounds in his possession and himself ploughing the deep waters, as vividly as though the picture had been presented to him in a magic mirror.

"It is a chance that I have never had, squire. These men are steady, industrious, practical fellows, who will keep me to my work, whether I will or not. They go out to make money, and I shall make some. Who knows but I may return home with a fortune to match this, just come to you?"

"Ben, you harp upon this money of Marmaduke's; but let me tell you that I don't know what I should have done without it. I have had nothing but drains upon me for years: you've been one of them."

"The old hypocrite!" thought Ben, "he's rolling in money, besides this new windfall. Well, sir," he said aloud, "I shall write——"

"Who's this?" interrupted the squire, who did not see so well as he once did.

It was the postman. Letters were not frequent at the squire's, as they are at many houses. The man was coming up the avenue, in the distance as yet. Squire Carr walked towards him and stretched out his hand for the letters.

The postman gave him two. One was a large, blue, formidable-looking packet, addressed to himself; the other was a perfumed, mignonne, three-cornered sort of missive, for Benjamin Carr, Esq.

"Here, Ben, I don't know who your correspondent may be," said the squire, tossing him the note. "She's an idiot, that's certain; nobody, above one, would think of sending a doll's thing like that through the post. It's a wonder it wasn't lost."

Benjamin Carr glanced at the handwriting and slipped the note into the pocket of his shooting coat. Sauntering to a little distance, while the squire was busy with his own letter, he there took it out, opened, and began to read it: a closely-written epistle, on thin foreign paper.

He was startled by something very like the bellow of a bull. Turning round, he saw the squire in a fine commotion, and the noise had come from him.

"Why, what is the matter?" exclaimed Ben, advancing.

"Matter!" ejaculated Squire Carr—"matter! They are mad; or else I am dreaming."

He held the formidable document before his eyes. He turned it, he gazed at it, he shook it, he pinched himself to see whether he was dreaming. If any man ever believed that his eyes played him false, Squire Carr believed his did then.

"What is it?" repeated the astonished Ben.

It was a notice from Mr. Fauntleroy that an action was entered upon—to eject him from the possession of that bijou of a house; to wrest from him the fortune; to give Marmaduke's money to Robert Carr; to forbid him to touch or remove so much (his own words just before to his son) as a plated spoon of the effects; to reduce him, in short, to a poor wretched non-inheriting beggar again. Not that all this, or the half of it, was stated; it was implied, and that was enough for the squire's vivid imagination.

"Ben, my boy, what does it mean?" he gasped.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Ben, considerably crestfallen.

"I'm not dreaming, am I?" asked the squire. "Mercy be good to us! What can they have found? Perhaps old Marmaduke made a will after all! They'd never enter an action without being justified. Get the horse into the dog-cart and drive me to the station, Ben. I must go over to see Fauntleroy. Hang him! the sly old villain! I should like to twist his neck."

"But you will promise me the hundred pounds, father?"

"Hundred pounds be shot!" shrieked the squire in a fury. "I've just got notice that I'm ruined, and he asks me for a hundred pounds! No, sir! nor a hundred pence. How can I afford money, now this inheritance is threatened?"

Benjamin Carr had a great mind to tell his father, that even if it were threatened and taken, he was as well off now as he had been a short while before. But it was not a time to press matters, and he drove the squire to the station in silence.

On that busy Saturday morning—and Saturdays were always busy days at the office of Mr. Fauntleroy—the clerks were amazed by the disturbed entrance of Squire Carr, pushing, agitated, restless; far more amazed than was perhaps their master, Mr. Fauntleroy. He had half expected it.

There ensued a hasty explanation; but the squire scarcely allowed himself to listen to it. Of all the blows that could have come upon him, this was the worst.

"And what do you think of yourself, pray, to be taking up a cause against the Carr family, when you have stuck by it for half a century, or it by you?"

"By old Marmaduke; by no others of it," returned Mr. Fauntleroy, who was secretly enjoying the squire's perplexity beyond everything.

"Why do you turn round against him now? I did not expect it of you, Fauntleroy."

"I don't understand you, squire."

"You are turning against the money he left, which is the same thing, wanting to make ducks and drakes of it."

"Marmaduke Curr's grandson came here and asked me if I would act for him as his solicitor, and I assented," said Mr. Fauntleroy. "In entering this action against you, I am but obeying his instructions."

"Marmaduke Carr's grandson!" scoffed the squire. "Who is he, the ill-born cur"—not but that the squire's words were somewhat plainer—"that he should presume to set himself up in his false pretences?"

"Ill-born or well-born, my clients are the same to me, provided their cause is good, and they pay me," coolly rejoined Mr. Fauntleroy.

"Well, is it a hoax?" asked the squire, coming nearer to the point, for Mr. Fauntleroy was taking a stealthy glance at his watch.

"If you mean is the action a hoax, most certainly it is not. Robert Carr looks upon it that he has the best right to his grandfather's money, and——"

"Why do you call him Robert Carr?" interposed the squire, in a flash of anger.

"What else can I call him? I wish you'd be a little cooler, and let me finish. And he has given me instructions to spare no pains, no expense, in maintaining this action against you."

"Is he a fool?" asked the squire. "It's one of two things: either he is a fool—for he must know that such an action can't be sustained under present circumstances, and so must you—or else he has got some secret information that I am in ignorance of. Has he got it? Is there a will of Marmaduke's found?"

"Of course there's not," said Mr. Fauntleroy, taken by surprise; "I should have heard of it, if there had been. As to any other information, I can't say; I don't know of any."

"Look here, Fauntleroy: if there is to be an action—not that I should think the fellow will be mad enough to go on with it—will you act for me?"

"I can't," said Mr. Fauntleroy; "I am acting for him."

"Turn him over. Who's he? I'd rather have you myself. And I must say you might have been neighbourly enough not to take this up against me."

"What does that signify? If I had not taken it up, somebody else would. And you have your own solicitors, you know, squire."

The squire growled. His solicitors were Mynn and Mynn, of Eckford—quiet, steady-going practitioners; but in so desperate a cause as this, the squire would have felt himself safer with a keen and not over-scrupulous man, such as Mr. Fauntleroy.

"You will not act for me, then?"

"I can't, squire."

"And you mean to carry it on to action?"

"I must do it. They are my positive instructions."

Squire Carr turned off in desperation, nearly upsetting Mr. Kenneth as he stamped through the outer office. As fast as he could, he stamped up to the railway station, and took the first train to Eckford, arriving at the office of Mynn and Mynn in a white heat.

Mynn and Mynn themselves were nearly myths, so far as their clients could get hold of them. Old Mynn had the gout perpetually; and the younger brother, George Mynn, had a chronic sort of asthma, and could not speak to people half his time. What business was absolutely necessary for a principal to do, George Mynn mostly did it. He made the journeys to London, he attended the sessions and assizes at Westerbury; but it very often happened that, when a client called at the office, neither would be there.

As it was, on this day. A young man of the name of Richards was head of the office just now, for the managing clerk had died, and Mynn and Mynn were looking out for another. A sharp, clever, unscrupulous man was this Richards, who, if he proved as clever when he got into practice for himself, would stand a fair chance of getting out of it again. He was alone when Squire Carr entered, and leaned over his desk to shake hands with him. He was a great friend of Valentine Carr's, and sometimes dined at the squire's on Sundays—a thin, weaselly sort of man, not unlike Valentine himself, with a cast in one eye.

Richards paused a moment, and then burst into a fit of laughter. To make pretensions of claiming property in such a case, amused him excessively.

"Well, they are doing it," said Squire Carr. "But I am astonished at Fauntleroy taking up such a cause. It's infamous, you know. They can do it only to annoy me; for they must be aware it's an action that will not lie."

"I say, squire, you must take care of one thing," said Richards, with the familiarity that characterised him, and which to some minds was exceedingly offensive—"mind they don't get up a false marriage."

"A false marriage! Why, the parties are dead."

"Oh, I mean proofs—false proofs. I've known such things done. When a fortune's at stake, you know, any means seem right ones."

"And I dare say they'd be capable of it," assented the squire. "Well, it must be seen to immediately. Here's what I had sent from Fauntleroy."

He drew out of his pocket the large letter, and Richards ran his eyes over it.

"They mean mischief," was his laconic remark.

"When can I see Mr. George Mynn?" asked the squire, the usual difficulties of getting at that gentleman striking upon his mind, especially after the last sentence, as a personal wrong. "Why doesn't he get a confidential clerk to do the outdoor work, so as to be in to see clients himself?"

"They are about engaging one, I believe," said Mr. Richards, alluding to the confidential clerk; "but he won't enter before December or January."

"Not before December or January!" retorted Squire Carr, as if that were another personal wrong.

"I heard George Mynn say we could do without one until then. So we can. The assize business is over, and there won't be much press for the next month or two. For my part, I wish they'd do without one for good. I could manage all they want done, if they'd let me."

"Well, look you here, Richards. I shall go on to the 'Bell' and get a bit of dinner at the ordinary, and then I shall come back here and wait till he comes in."

"He mayn't come in at all again to-day—sure not to, if he doesn't get back from Westerbury till late," was the satisfactory rejoinder of Richards; and Squire Carr felt that he should like to strike somebody in the dilemma, if he only knew whom.

"Then you will have to take my instructions," he said, sharply; "I shall be back in an hour."

"Very good," said Mr. Richards. "And we can talk this business over to-morrow, squire, as much as you like; for I am coming to your place for the day. I've promised Valentine, and I want to make the acquaintance of your second son."

For this Mr. Richards was but a clerk of some months standing at Mynn and Mynn's; to which situation he had come from a distance, and, therefore, had not yet enjoyed the honour of an introduction to Mr. Benjamin Carr.

Thus the great cause, "Carr versus Carr," was inaugurated. Those connected with it little dreamt of the strange excitement it was to create, ere the termination came.

CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST OF ROBERT CARR.

By a bright fire in her handsome and most comfortable drawing-room, in her widow's cap—assumed, now that all hope had died out—sat Mrs. Dundyke. The October wind was whistling without, the October rain was falling on the window panes; and there was a look of anxiety on her otherwise calm face, still so fair and attractive, as she listened to the storm. The summer and autumn, up to the close of September, had been remarkably warm and fine; but when October came in, it brought bad weather with it.

A gust and a patter, worse than any that had gone before, aroused Mrs. Dundyke from her seat. She laid her work—a woollen comforter, that she was knitting—on the small and beautiful table at her side, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and walked to the window.

"I wonder whether he is out in it?" she said, as she watched the trees bending in the storm. "This anxiety is killing him. The very work is killing him. Abroad in all weathers; out of one damp church into another; getting heated with his weak state and the ardour of the pursuit, and then becoming chilled in some sudden storm such as this! He may find the record, perhaps, but he will never live to reap the benefit."

Need you be told that Mrs. Dundyke's soliloquy applied to Robert Carr? He was staying with her. When he went back to London from Westerbury, and sought Mrs. Dundyke, to deliver certain messages of the kindest nature sent by him from Mr. Arkell and Travice, she had insisted upon his making her house his home while he remained in London to pursue his search.

And he did so; and began his toilsome search of the London church marriage registers. What a wearying task it was, let those testify who may have been obliged to enter upon such. By dint of a great deal of trouble, and of correspondence with Mr. Fauntleroy, and recalled recollections from middle-aged people in Westerbury, who had been young men once and friends of the elder Robert Carr, he, the present Robert Carr, succeeded in ascertaining the place where his father and mother had sojourned that fortnight in London. It was in one of the quiet streets of the Strand, in the parish of St. Clement Danes. But when St. Clement Danes' register was examined, no entry of any such marriage could be found there; and for the first time since the blow fell, Robert Carr felt his heart sink with a vague fear that he dared not dwell upon.

It had seemed to him so easy! He had felt as sure a trust in his mother's marriage as he felt in Heaven. It was only to find out where they had stayed that fortnight in London, and search the parish church register; for there, and only there, Robert Carr argued, the marriage had taken place. But there, it was now evident, that it had not taken place, and he was all at sea.

He began with the other churches; he knew not what else to do. In Holland they could not have been married, from the want of legal papers, and other matters, necessary to foreigners united abroad. He searched the churches nearest to St. Clement Danes first, and then went on to others, and others, and others. He would go up after breakfast from his kind friend, who was nursing him like a mother, and begin his daily task; out of one church into another, as she had phrased it, in all weathers—rain, hail, storm—and go back at night again utterly wearied out.

Mrs. Dundyke stood at the window watching the rain. She fancied it was beginning to grow dusk; but it was not time just yet, and the afternoon was a dark one. He would not be home yet awhile, she was thinking. He stopped in those cold churches as long as there was a ray of light to see by. Mrs. Dundyke was turning from the window, when she saw an omnibus stop, and Robert Carr get out of it. He seemed worse than usual; weaker in strength, more tottering in frame; and as he looked up at her with a faint, sad smile, a conviction came over her that she should not be able to save the life of this poor young man; that all her care, all her comforts, all her ample income would not benefit him. And how very ample her income would for the future be, she had not known until that day. She was a rich lady for this world; she might ride in her carriage, if she chose, and be grand for all time.

"Oh! Robert!" she exclaimed, meeting him on the stairs—and she had taken to call him by the familiar name, as she might a son—"I fear you have got very wet! I am so glad you came home early!"

He walked unsteadily to the easy chair by the fire, and sunk in it. Mrs. Dundyke, with him daily, saw not the change that every hour was surely making in him; but she did notice how wan and ill he looked this evening.

"Have you not been well to-day, Robert?"

"Not very. I have been spitting so much of that blood again. And I felt so weary too; so sick of it all."

"There's no success, then, again!"

"None. Altogether, I thought I'd leave it for the day, and come back and take a rest."

He sighed as he spoke, but the sigh broke off with a moaning sound. Mrs. Dundyke glanced at him. She had resumed her knitting—which was a chest protector for himself—until the wine that she had rung for should be brought.

"Robert, are you losing heart?"

"No, I can never lose that. There was a marriage, if we could only find out where. You would be as sure of it as I am, dear Mrs. Dundyke, had you known my mother."

Mrs. Dundyke made no rejoinder. For herself, she had never fully believed in the marriage at all, but she was not cruel enough to say so. She sat watching him over her knitting: now bending forward with his thin hands spread out to the warmth of the fire; now suddenly bringing his hands to his chest as he coughed, choked; now lying back in the chair, panting, his thin nostrils working, his breath coming in great gasps; and there came in that moment over Mrs. Dundyke as she looked, a conviction—she knew not whence or why—that a very, very short period would bring the end.

She felt her face grow moist with a cold moisture. How was it that she had been so blind to the obvious truth? She knitted two whole rows of knitting before she spoke, and then she told him, with a calm voice, that she should write for his wife.

"How kind you are!" he murmured. "I shall never repay you."

Mrs. Dundyke laughed cheerfully.

"I don't want repayment. There is nothing to repay."

"Nothing to repay! No kindly friendship, no trouble, no cost! I wonder how much I cost you in wine alone?"

"Robert," she said, in a low, earnest tone—though she wondered whether he might not be jesting—"do you know what they tell me my future income will be? Mr. Littelby was here to-day, giving me an account of things, for I put my poor husband's affairs into his hands on my return. It will not be much less than two thousand a year."

The amount of the sum quite startled him.

"Two thousand a year!"

"It will indeed, as they tell me. By the articles of partnership I am allowed a handsome income from the house in Fenchurch-street; but the chief of the money comes from speculations my husband has been engaged in for many years, in connexion with a firm on the Stock Exchange. Safe speculations, and profitable; not hazardous ones. This money is realized, and put out in the Funds, in what they call the Five-per-Cents.; and I shall have nearly two thousand a year. I had no idea of it; and the puzzle to me now is, how I shall spend it. Don't you think I require a few kind visitors to help me?"

Before he could answer, there came on a violent fit of coughing, worse than any she had yet seen, and quite a little stream of blood trickled from his mouth. It was nothing particularly new, but that night Mrs. Carr was written for in haste.

"Tell her to bring the desk with her," said Robert; and Mrs. Dundyke wrote down the words just as he spoke them.

But he rallied again, and in a day or two was actually out as before, prosecuting his search amidst those hopeless churches. He confided what he called a secret to Mrs. Dundyke—namely, that he had not confessed to his wife that any suspicion was cast upon his birth. The honest truth was, Robert Carr shrunk from it; for he knew it would so alarm and grieve her. She was well connected; had fallen in love with the young Cambridge student during a visit she was paying in England; and when the time came that marriage was spoken of, her friends raised some objection because Robert Carr's father was not of gentle blood, but was in business as a merchant. What she would say when she came to know that he was suspected of not being even that merchant's legitimate son, Robert scarcely cared to speculate.

She arrived in an afternoon at Mrs. Dundyke's, having come direct to London Bridge by the steamer from Rotterdam. Robert was out in London, as usual; but Mrs. Dundyke was not alone: Mildred Arkell was with her. Perhaps of all people, next to his wife, Mildred had been most shocked at the fate of Mr. Dundyke. This was the first time she had seen his widow, for she had been away in the country with Lady Dewsbury.

A young, pretty woman, looking little more than a girl, with violet-blue eyes, dark hair, and a flush upon her cheeks. Mrs. Dundyke marvelled at her youth—that she should be a wife since three years, and the mother of two children.

"I wrote to you to be sure to bring the children," said Mrs. Dundyke.

"I know: it was very kind. But I thought, as Robert was ill, they might disturb him with their noise. They are but babies; and I left them behind."

Mrs. Dundyke was considering how she could best impart the news of the suspected birth to this poor, unconscious young lady. "If you could give her a hint of it yourself, should she arrive during my absence!" Robert Carr had said to Mrs. Dundyke that very morning, with the hectic deepening on his hollow cheeks. And Mrs. Dundyke began her task.

And a sad shock it proved to be. Mrs. Carr, accustomed to the legal formalities that attend a marriage in the country of her birth, and without which formalities the ceremony cannot be performed, could not for some time be led to understand how, if there was a marriage, it could have been kept a secret. There were many points difficult to make her, a foreigner, understand; but when she had mastered them, she grew strangely interested in the recital of the past, and Mildred Arkell, as a resident in Westerbury at the time, was called upon to repeat every little detail connected with the departure of her husband's father and mother from their native place. In listening, Mrs. Carr's cheek grew hectic as her husband's.

But she had her secret also, which she had been keeping from her husband. She told it now to Mrs. Dundyke. Something was wrong with affairs at Rotterdam. The surviving partners of the house, three covetous old Dutchmen, disputed their late partner's right (or rather that of his children) to draw out certain monies from the house; at the death of Robert Carr it lapsed to the house, they said. This was the account Mrs. Carr gave, but it was not a very clear one, neither did she seem to understand the case. The Carrs had in the house other money, about which there was no dispute, but even this the firm refused to pay out until the other matter was settled. The effect was, that the Carrs had no money to go on with; and there would probably be litigation.

"I did not tell Robert, because I was in hopes it would be comfortably decided without him," said Mrs. Carr. "By the way, you wrote me word that Robert said I was to bring over the desk. Which desk did he mean? his own or his father's?"

"I really don't know," replied Mrs. Dundyke; "he was very ill when he spoke, and I wrote the words down just as he spoke them."

"Well, I have brought both; I know he examined Mr. Carr's desk after his death, and he locked it up again, and has the key with him. His own desk also was at home; so, not knowing which was meant, I brought the two."

When Robert Carr came home that evening he looked awfully ill. The expression is not too strong a one; there was something in his attenuated face, its sunken eyes, its ghastly colour, and its working nostrils, that struck the beholder with awe. Mrs. Dundyke was alone in the dining parlour when he came in, and was shocked to see him. Whether it was the long day's work on his decreasing strength—for he had remained later than usual—she could not tell, but he had never looked so near death as this.

"Oh, Robert!" was her involuntary exclamation; "I had better go up and prepare your wife before she sees you."

He suffered her to put him in the great invalid chair she had surreptitiously had brought in a day or two before; he drank the restoring cordial she tendered him; he was passive in her hands as a child, in his great weakness. "I'm afraid I must have a week's rest," he said to her, as she busied herself taking off his gloves, and smoothing his poor damp hair. "My strength seems to be failing unaccountably; I don't know how I have got through the day."

"Oh yes, yes," she eagerly assented; "a little rest; that is what you want. You shall lie in bed all to-morrow."

"Has Emma brought the children?"

"No. They are quite well," she says; "I am going to send her down to you. And, Robert, she knows all, and says she'll help to search the registers herself."

Mrs. Dundyke spoke in a light-hearted tone, but before she went upstairs she sent an urgent message for the doctor.

And when the surgeon came, he said there was no further hope whatever, as, indeed, there had not been for some time now, and that a day or two would "decide."

Decide what? But that he did not say.

In one sense of the word, it may be said that death had come suddenly upon Robert Carr. Had he been less absorbed in that one point of worldly interest, he might have seen its approach more clearly. Not until the morning succeeding his wife's arrival, did he look it fully in the face; and then he found that it was upon the very threshold, was entering in at the opened door.

All the bustle, the anxiety as to temporal interests, the plans and provisions for the future for those to be left behind, ensued. Mrs. Dundyke hastily summoned a legal gentleman, Mr. Littelby. He was a solicitor of many years' standing, not in practice for himself, but conducting the business of an eminent legal firm. He was an old friend of the Dundykes, and Robert Carr had seen him several times; indeed his advice and assistance had been of much service in the search of the church registers. Mr. Littelby was about leaving his present situation, and was in negotiation with a firm in the country for another. Mrs. Dundyke sent up a hasty summons for him.

A handsome bedchamber, in which was every comfort, a bright fire in the hearth, a bed, on which lay a shadowy form, a pale shadowy face, a young weeping girl standing near, soon to be a widow, and you have almost the last scene in the short life of Robert Carr.

He was dying, poor fellow, with that secret, which he had no doubt shortened his life in endeavouring to trace, still unsolved; and he was dying with the conviction, that the proofs did exist somewhere, as fully upon him as it ever had been.

"Emma!"

She dried her eyes, and tried to hide that they had been wet, as she heard the call. The day was getting on.

"Is Littelby not come yet?"

"Yes, I think he is. Some one came a few minutes ago, and is downstairs with Mrs. Dundyke. I think I hear them coming up."

Mrs. Dundyke was coming into the room with a gentleman, a middle-aged man with a sharp nose and pleasant dark eyes. It was Mr. Littelby. They were left alone together—the lawyer and the dying man. But it was a very short and simple task, this will-making. Over almost as soon as begun.

"He asked me to tie you up with trustees, Emma," said the dying man; "but I have left all to you—children, and money, and all else. You will love them, won't you, when I am gone?"

"Oh, Robert, yes!" she said, with a burst of sorrow. "I wish I and they could go with you."

"And, Emma, mind that you prosecute this search. I have asked Littelby to help you, and he will. He says he expects to leave London at the end of the year, for he is in negotiation with another firm; but I dare say it will be found before then. Let that search be your first and greatest task."

She said it should be—she would have promised anything in that parting hour. She lay, with her pretty hair on the counterpane, and her wet eyes turned to him, devouring his last looks, listening to his last words. Almost literally the last in this world, for, before the close of the afternoon, Robert Carr fell into a lethargy, from which he did not awake alive.

And those two lone women were together in the house of the dead—widows indeed. The one deprived of her young husband almost on the threshold of life; the other bereft, she knew not how, of her many years' partner. Poor Mrs. Dundyke had hardly wanted more sorrow in her desolate home.

So far as ease in the future went, she was well off. The large income mentioned by her to Robert Carr would indeed be hers. It was chiefly the result of that first thousand pounds Mr. Dundyke had risked on the Stock Exchange. Fortune had favoured him in an unusual degree. You remember the nails in the horse-shoe, how they doubled and doubled: so it had seemed to be with the thousand pounds of Mr. Dundyke. But poor Mrs. Carr's future fortune was all uncertain. Whether she would have sufficient to keep her children in easy competency, or whether she would find herself, like so many more gentlewomen, obliged to do something for her bread in this world of changes, she did not know.

Even in this week that succeeded her husband's death, she was applied to for money, which she could not find. The application came from Mr. Fauntleroy. Lawyers have a peculiar facility for getting rid of money, as some of us have been obliged to know to our cost; and Mr. Fauntleroy had already disposed of the first fifty pounds advanced to him, and wanted more if he was to go on with the case.

Mrs. Carr had it not. Until affairs should be settled in Rotterdam, she had no such sum at her command. She could have procured it indeed from many friends, but she was sorely puzzled what to do for the best. On the one hand, there was the dying promise to her husband to pursue this cause; on the other, there was the extreme doubt whether there was any real cause to pursue. If there was no cause, why, then, how worse than foolish it would be to spend money over a chimera. Many and many were the anxious consultations she had with Mrs. Dundyke, even while her husband lay dead in the house.