prey upon her fears, and, by instituting an investigation on his own account, to make his power felt indeed! As soon as one source of danger was done away, in short, poor Maggie became the victim of new apprehensions, which, it seemed, were never to end until all should be revealed; there would be no further cause of fear to her, only because the worst that could befall had happened. The criminal, she had read, is never secure; and she, who was neither criminal nor cognisant of any crime, was doomed, it appeared, like him ̧ to dwell in the constant dread of discovery. Her very faith would, at times, faint and fail beneath this load of care; for, could the government of the world be just, she asked herself, when the innocent was thus made to suffer like the guilty? Nay, how could she reconcile with justice the whole tenor of her unhappy husband's blameless life, nourished as it had been upon vain hopes, that had had their fruition only by an accident, which itself had overwhelmed him with ruin and despair! How was it, how could it have been permitted, that the crime-nay, not the crime-that the impulse of a moment, should have brought the fruit of a well-spent life to nought, and withered such a goodly tree!

In vain she tried to comfort herself with the reflection that John was happy now at last, and compensated for his life of unrest and self-denial; and that presently, in Heaven's good time, they would meet again, with this Shadow no more between them! Maggie was a good woman, but it is given but to few mortals to have their convictions in the happy Future so firmly set as to outweigh the miserable Present. She even ventured to use the argument of comparison with respect to Richard. If all this wretchedness had not happened, would she not have had to endure other miseries, as bad, or almost as bad, as Richard's wife-the wife of a sot, a forger-and the worst of forgers, one who had made use of an innocent hand to perform his crime-faithless, dishonoured in her own eyes,

A

and perhaps successful in his threatened scheme of teaching her the vices to which he was himself the slave! As Richard's wife, in short, might she not have been even as miserable as was his brother's widow? An argument surely more creditable to our humanity than that which would extract consolation from a comparison with the misfortunes of others; but yet one that failed to console her-for to experience consolation, one must at least feel that the catastrophe has happened, that Fate for that time (for, alas! she is insatiable) has worked her utmost malice; and not, as Maggie felt, that the worst was still impending. But for that, indeed, her father's devotion and little Willie's demands upon her loving service, might in time have won her from the past; but from these dreadful possibilities of the future they could never win her. thoughtless word, an idle question, could at any moment array them before her eyes; and when even Martha Linch-whose perceptions of what sympathy demanded had been shown to be most delicate, and who had restrained that usually unruly member, her tongue, in connection with all that had happened, in a manner that the engraver had pronounced to be miraculous-asked one day to look at that lock of hair belonging to dear Mr John, which the captain had sent home, Maggie was overwhelmed with confusion. The hair was in a closed locket round her neck, but she mechanically placed her hand upon it, as though Martha's eyes could have pierced the gold. The idea, suggested to her by little Willie's remark, of pretending that what the locket contained was her father's hair, did indeed strike her; but she rejected it, as likely to lead to contradiction and complications; and she had absolutely nothing to say, save to refuse her companion's request. To have shown her the dear relic would necessarily have excited question and comment, for when Martha had last seen John, his hair was brown as the filbert; and yet not to show it must have seemed a strange thing also. Luckily, Martha Linch,

being one who never took offence, but was always fearful of offending, was herself the apologist in this instance; but Maggie thought, with a shudder, how much worse might have been her difficulty had it occurred with some one else.

This was only one example of the perplexities of her unhappy position. It seemed that it must behove her to be ever on the watch lest her tongue should trip, ever wearing the shield upon her arm, to turn not only the shaft of malice, but the arrow, shot at a venture, from the defenceless memory of the dead. Worse than all, she felt herself chained to Hilton and the neighbourhood of the roof she most abhorred; for, in case any discovery should take place, how necessary was it that she should be on the spot, to stamp the first flicker of suspicion out, which else would grow and grow, like flame itself, till it defied all effort to subdue it.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE PLAN OF THE ESTATE.

Or all documents in which the mind of man is visible, there is none perhaps so significant of their writers as their will. All other indentures and agreements are more or less of a temporary nature, or may be abrogated by change of circumstances, but a man's will is his very last act of all, not to be made public till he has deceased, and become indifferent to the opinion of his fellow-creatures, and in it, therefore, he pleases himself alone, and shows his nature as it is. And thus John Milbank's will was proved to be the very reflex of his own disposition: clear, concise, decisive, without condition, or even suggestion, and, in short, the very opposite of what old Matthew Thurle's had been. It left (with the exception of a legacy to Mrs Morden, sufficient to provide for her future needs) his whole property unconditionally to "Margaret, his beloved wife." There was no mention of Richard's name in the document, but the impossibility of proving his demise was, after all, of little moment, since abundant proof was found among his brother's papers that he had become already indebted to John for more than the value of his share of the business that was nominally carried on in their joint names. So well had this prospered, however, since John had been relieved from the dead-weight of the other's idleness and the drain of his extravagances, that enough was left to leave Maggie handsomely provided for.

The Best of Husbands, it was remarked, had deserved his reputation even in that crucial particular in which so many excellent mates are found to fall short: it is not unusual to discover in his last testament the first evidence that a husband has any will of his own at all; and it sometimes turns out to be a pretty strong one. But John Milbank had been consistent to the last; his conduct in the matter was generally approved of-certainly by the ladies-more than any other feature in his career: and it was assumed that Maggie Thorne, in rejecting Thomas Idle in favour of Francis Goodchild, had shown she knew upon which side her bread was buttered. That the furniture of Rosebank was within a few months disposed of without reserve, did not surprise these gossips: they did not give the widow much credit for sentiment with respect to domestic associations; but what did excite their wonder was, why, "with all that money," she should be content to still live on in the house which had sufficed for her home when she had toiled for daily bread? In Mitchell Street, however, she remained, and in it her father still followed his old pursuits, not, of course, from necessity, but because they were a labour of love. In the same little arbour in that humble garden on the leads, in which, but four years ago, she had accepted Richard Milbank as her future husband, she was sitting one summer morning, when Mr Linch called in to say that a purchaser had at last been found for Rosebank. Though she had expected, and even wished for this announcement, it gave her a momentary thrill of fear; nothing, indeed, remained to be discovered there, while its continuance upon her hands was, of course, a considerable pecuniary loss; and yet to part with it seemed like giving up a sacred trust.

"The party proposes to take the whole estate," said Mr Linch, "so that you will have no further trouble about it: that spinney, and the gravel-pit, let me tell you, have hitherto