some scarcely palpable difference, the intonation of a word struck upon my ear, and for the moment I fancied I had been duped. But when I grasped the woman's arm, I saw the scar that had been familiar to me on the arm of my wife."

Mr. Holroyde shrugged his shoulders. "That's very possible," he said indifferently; "Leonora is a wonderful woman, and it is not to be supposed she would allow so small a matter as a scar to baffle her; and now, as the deception I suggested has lasted little more than a twelvemonth, I hope you will say something generous to me before I die."

For some minutes there was profound silence, while Godfrey Pierrepoint sat motionless by the side of the dying man. Yet it may be that during the silence as earnest a prayer went up as any that was ever uttered aloud before assembled mankind. After that silent prayer, Godfrey turned to his old enemy.

"I hope that God will forgive you as completely as I do, Arthur Holroyde,” he said.

CHAPTER XIII.

TWO LETTERS.

BEFORE day dawned upon the darkness of that night Sir Jasper's guest was dead; and the dawn found Sir Jasper and his tenant closeted together in the yellow drawing-room, where all the glitter of pictures and bric-à-brac looked wan in the light of expiring candles.

Mr. Pierrepoint had told his landlord the story of his wedded life, and the character of the lady then sheltered by the Abbey roof.

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"I warned you against this person before, Sir Jasper," said Godfrey, when he had concluded the story of Leonora Fane's treachery.

"You did," answered the Baronet, with a deprecating gesture, "and I disregarded your warning; and now you heap coals of fire on my head by interfering a second time to preserve me

from the

consequences of my own infatuation. My dear Pierrepoint, you don't know what a demented idiot I have been. I was going to marry that woman. Yes, I was prepared to make one great gulp and swallow any thing in the way of antecedent history that she might please to invent for me. I knew that she was not a particularly good woman-one can hardly expect a brilliant creature like that to be particularly good, you know-but I liked her. She was agreeable to me; and you will allow that in the matter of millinery she is unapproachable. Good women are

so apt to be neglectful of their millinery. They will not follow the precepts of those delightful Messieurs de Goncourt, and remember that an irreproachable creature is all the more delightful when she possesses the faintest parfum de Lorette. However, I must not forget to thank you for having given me this warning. The lively widow shall receive her congé. I shall miss her: yes, I confess that I shall miss her. But I shall write to Mr. Woods, to inquire if there is any thing of Rubens's or Etty's likely to drop into the market;

and if there is, I'll run up to Christie's and buy it. In the mean time, the widow shall go."

But Mrs. Harding, otherwise Mrs. Fane, did not wait to receive her congé from Sir Jasper Denison. When Mr. Hills took the Baronet his breakfast at two o'clock in the afternoon that succeeded Arthur Holroyde's death, he carried a dainty little patchouli-perfumed note on the tray, which he placed on the table beside his master's bed. The Baronet recognised the widow's dashing caligraphy. The hand had not trembled once, though the letter had been written immediately after Leonora Fane had been told that Arthur Holroyde and Godfrey Pierrepoint were closeted together. The Baronet sighed plaintively as he perused the note, which ran thus:

"DEAR SIR JASPER,-A letter received late this afternoon summons me to town to the dear

friend whose ill-health you have already heard of.”

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"I am afraid the dear friend' is only a genteel Mrs. Harris," thought the Baronet sadly. "What a pity a woman with such an outline

should not be the sort of person a gentleman can marry!"

"This time," continued the letter, "I fear the case is really serious, and I have decided on leaving Roxborough by the first train, though, by so doing, I shall lose all chance of bidding adieu to you, and of thanking you with my own lips for all your goodness. How dear the memory of that goodness will be to me when I am far away from you and Scarsdale, I dare not trust myself to write now; for my heart is very, very sad, dear Sir Jasper, and something tells me that this separation between you and me may be a long one."

"Tears," murmured the Baronet, as he examined some pale smears upon the "And yet

paper.

I daresay tears are very easy to produce; I know too much of the tricks of the picture-dealers to be taken in by that sort of thing."

He went on with the letter:

"Farewell, then, Sir Jasper. I leave this dear dwelling with a gloomy foreboding of future sorrow. I have enemies-enemies whose dark machinations it would be vain to endeavour to