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'However," said Stephen, "pity will not alter facts. I wait for an expression of your opinion." Augustus looked at his partner. William the Silent nodded his head suggestively in the direction of the door.

"I leave to you," said Stephen, "if you like to undertake it, the task of proving that there was a marriage. I should advise you not to try. It will, I assure you, be labor lost." "We refer you," said Augustus, “to Mr. BilAgain neither spoke, and Stephen was obliged liter. You may go and see him. Tell him, if 'to go on. you please, what you have told us. Our offer made a few weeks ago is, of course, withdrawn. You can no longer act as Alison's guardian. Henceforth, it will be better for you to communicate with us, who will assume the position of the young lady's protectors, through your solicitors. We express no opinion on what you have done; we do not venture to give you any advice. Good morning."

"The consequences of this discovery," he said, "will be very serious. It makes me the Head of the House. Alison, my brother's daughter, is entitled to nothing. I shall, of course, take my brother's position as chief partner in this firm." "No!" said William, decidedly.

"Certainly not," said Augustus. "Whatever happens, you will never, I assure you, be a partner in this firm."

Stephen nodded carelessly. "We shall see. When it comes to taking me in or taking the consequences-however, I can afford to overlook a little natural surprise. Now, before I go before the Court of Probate, I am anxious to obtain your approval, your acknowledgment, that Remy course is absolutely forced upon me. member, you invited me to be guardian. In that capacity I went into residence at Clapham; in that capacity I made inquiries in Alison's interest; still in that capacity, still in her interest, I searched through the old papers, and-I made this discovery. She has no legal right to more than the clothes she stands in. All the rest is mine. I am the sole heir. I ask you, as business men, what I am to do. I bring to you, as my cousins and hers, the first intelligence of the discovery."

He did not wait for an answer, being perhaps afraid that they might either repeat that question as to the nature of the discovery or counsel him to go and burn it.

"What would either of you do? It is, I know, absurd to ask. You would advise me at once to ask for bare justice. My just and legal claim is for the whole estate. This is my inheritance. When that claim is granted, I am

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'Perhaps in either case we lose nothing by waiting. Could we have thought Anthony capable of such deception?"

"Lies!" said William again, stoutly.

Augustus Hamblin, himself a man of the strictest principle, had known his cousin Anthony from boyhood, had worked beside him, knew as he thought every action of his life. Yet he seemed ready, on the bare, unsupported statement of Stephen, to believe that a man whose youth and manhood, open to all alike, were honorable and honored, was a profligate, a deceiver of women, a secret libertine. There is no man so good but that the worst shall be believed of him. The just man of Athens would never have been exiled had his countrymen been able to rake up a scandal against him. For my own part, when I consider the position, I am amazed that Aristides did not himself grow weary of provoking his

countrymen by the exhibition of a virtue to which nothing short of the nineteenth century can show a parallel, and openly go and break half a dozen at least of the commandments, and so regain a hold upon the affections of sympathetic humanity. William Hamblin would doubtless have been equally ready to believe this thing but for his suspicion and distrust of Stephen.

The latter, only half satisfied with his reception by the cousins, drove straight away to the family lawyer. He would have it out at oncestate his case, throw down the glove, and defy them to do their worst.

Mr. Billiter thought he was come to sign the agreement, according to their proposal, by which he was to undertake the name of guardian, receive an honorarium, and leave the conduct of affairs entirely in the hands of the partners. But Stephen pushed it aside.

"You may tear that thing up," he said rudely. "The time has gone by when that sort of thing could be signed. I have come to tell you that I have made a discovery—whether you knew it all along or not I do not know; perhaps you did, very likely you did-a discovery of so important a nature that it entirely alters the position both of myself and of Alison."

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game.

You give up the provision we offered you; you risk all in a single coup. Your proofs have need to be strong. You will want them as strong as they can be made."

Stephen sat down upon the table familiarly— on the awful table, before which, as a boy, he had so often trembled.

"I begin to wonder," he said, with as much rudeness as could be thrown into words and manner, "whether you have been a dupe or an accomplice. Anthony had plenty of dupes. He must have wanted an accomplice."

"Dear me!" said the lawyer, not in the least ruffled by this insult. "Here is a turning of tables. So I am an accomplice, am I? Well?" "You pretend not to know what I mean. And yet there are only you and myself in the room."

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Perhaps it is not prudent to be without witnesses when you are here; but still, you see, I risk it."

"I have been treated," said Stephen, "since my brother's death, with the greatest contumely by yourself and my cousins. You have offered me the post of guardian, coupled with degrading conditions. Yet I have held my hand, knowing what I knew. The time has come when I shall hold it no longer. I am now prepared to strike.”

"I clearly perceive, Stephen," the lawyer observed, "that you have been meditating all along a stroke worthy of your former reputation."

"Your age protects you," replied Stephen, "You know that you can say whatever you please."

"I have known you all your life, Stephen

"What do you think of that?" asked Stephen Hamblin, and I have never yet known you do a triumphantly.

"I never allow myself to think of anything until the proofs are before me. Produce your proofs."

"Not at all," replied Stephen, tapping his breast, where lay his pocket-book-"not at all. If there was a marriage, produce your proofs."

The ferret-like eyes lit up with a sharpness which Stephen did not like.

"We assume the marriage," said the lawyer. "The presumption is in favor of the marriage. You have to disprove it. Where are your proofs ?"

"As I said before," Stephen answered, "I reserve them. You will find that the law assumes that there was no marriage, and will call upon you for the proofs."

"In that case, I give no opinion. This document, then "-he took up the agreement―" is so much waste paper."

straightforward action. Now tell me, if you like, what you propose to do."

"This, at all events, is straightforward. I am going to take out letters of administration, not for Alison, but for myself. I shall put in an immediate claim on the estate, as the sole heir of my brother, who left no will, and was never married."

He tried to look the old lawyer steadily in the face, but his eyes quailed.

"I see," said the old man, "this is your manoeuvre, is it? Well, Stephen, we shall fight you. I don't believe a word of your discovery. It is bounce and suspicion, and a hope that, because we do not know where Anthony was married, we can not find out. Meantime, you must of course live on your own resources. You will have no help from us."

"That," said Stephen, "I anticipated."
"You will get nothing from the estate until

"It is. I refuse to sign it. I am going to the case is decided; and, of course, we shall claim the whole estate, as sole heir." only communicate with you through your solici

"A bold game, Stephen. A desperately bold tors. I have nothing more to say."

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"I only claim my rights. Do you, a lawyer, with my own people." dare to call that dishonorable?"

"Stephen Hamblin,” replied Mr. Billiter, laying down his papers and leaning back in his chair, and tapping his knuckles with his glasses, “I said just now that I had never known you do one single good action. But you have done so many bad ones that I am never surprised at anything you do."

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As for the bad actions, as you are pleased to call them-it is absurd, I suppose, to remind you of the exaggerations made—"

"Ta-ta-ta," said the lawyer. "We know. Your brother on whose generosity you lived being dead, you proceed to reward that generosity by proclaiming to the world the illegitimacy of his daughter, which you suspect, and hope to be true, but can not prove. That is, indeed, the act of a high-toned, whole-souled gentleman."

"It is in a lawyer's office," said Stephen, as if with sorrow, "I am upbraided in my intention of claiming what is justly due to me. So far, however, as Alison is concerned, your own injustice and the misrepresentations of my cousins will produce no effect. I shall provide for her: so far as a yearly hundred or two, I am willing="

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"Get out of my office, man!" cried the ferret-faced little lawyer, pointing to the door. You propose to rob your niece of a quarter of a million, and you offer her a hundred a year! Go, sir, and remember you have not got the money yet!"

Stephen had done it now. He felt rather cold as he walked away from Bedford Row. It was like parting with power in reserve. As for the wrath of his cousins and the old lawyer, that troubled him, after the first unpleasantness, very little. One thing only seriously annoyed him. Why had he not drawn the proffered yearly allowance of five hundred pounds before announcing his intentions? It was awkward, because Anthony, his sole source of income, being dead, and his balance at the bank being reduced to less than fifty pounds, it might become a difficulty to provide the daily expenses. However, long before that difficulty presented itself, he should, he thought, have gained a decision of the Court in his favor.

"In your own interests ? "

"Very much, if we look at it only from a money point of view," Stephen said with a sigh. "It is connected with my brother's estate, in fact. The estate, you know, is worth, one way and the other, something like three hundred thousand pounds."

"Ah! He left no will, did he?"

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'None; and up to the present moment my niece, his daughter, has been supposed to be the sole heiress. Now, however, we have discovered that the sole heir is- But it will all come out in the courts, before very long. No need to talk about it. This is very fine Léoville; let us have another bottle."

"And you are his only brother," said Jack Baker thoughtfully. "Why-"

If Stephen had searched about all over London for the best method of spreading a report abroad, he could hardly have hit upon a better one than that of hinting to his friend Jack Baker that something was in prospect. Perhaps he knew this.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE VALLEY OF TEARS.

THE pudding was finished and the tablecloth removed before Alison appeared. She was calm now, but there was a burning spot in each cheek, and a glow in her dark eyes, from which an enemy would have augured ill.

She sat down and wrote two letters: one of them was to Gilbert, the other to Augustus Hamblin. To the latter she related, as exactly as she could, what had taken place. The former she simply invited to call and see her as soon as he conveniently could.

She sent Nicolas with this note to the Temple, and posted the former. The boy understood that the letter meant the beginning of war, and his enthusiasm in the cause was roused. He acquired, too, a considerable accession of self-importance from considering the fact of his own share in the struggle.

came.

"I say, I suppose you envy me, don't you?

Wish you had been in my place to cowhide him?

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He took the omnibus to Blackfriars very The boy stopped, waiting for applause. None soberly, playing no pranks at all on the way, and turning neither to right nor to left until he found himself in Gilbert's chambers in Brick Court. The young barrister was engaged in some deviling, that ingenious method by which the briefless delude themselves into the belief that they are getting on. He looked up and nodded cheerfully. "How is young Nick? What seeks he here?" one about the legs will make him. But, I say, he asked.

"Why, you don't mean to say that you—"

"I promised, which is the same thing," said Nicolas proudly. "Let him wait till I am oneand-twenty; then he shall feel how spry a curly

you're a private and particular friend of Alison's.

Nicolas shook his head and looked mighty I don't mind taking you in. It's seven years to

grave.

“What has happened?"

"Villainies," replied the boy in a hollow voice -“villainies, conspiracies, and a kick-up. Here's a note for you. Alison wants you to come at once. You are not to delay one moment, she says, not even to part your hair down the middle." The young man's middle parting was always remarkably clear and well defined. "Tell him,' she says, 'if he wants any more spooning, he'd better step out and get down at once.''

"I must at least change my coat. Now, boy," emerging from his bedroom, "just tell me, in a few words, what has happened."

"Uncle Stephen-no, I forgot, he is no longer to be an uncle-first-cousin-once-removed Stephen has been staying with us for a week or so, as you know. He's been mighty civil to Alison, I must own. But the artfulness! It was all to poke about among the papers. And then he has a row with my mother, and then with Alison, and then he tells her that she's no right to the fortune at all, and it's all his. Think of that! Oh, yes,' he says, 'you think it's yours, do you? Much. I'm the owner, I am. As for you, you are nobody. You may go. Nicolas Cridland,' he went on, 'may go, too, with the old lady.'"

"Not the heiress! What does he mean?" "Here comes in the villainy. Because, he says, Uncle Anthony was never married; that's the reason. Well, when Alison heard him say that she's got a fine temper of her own, once get her back up: you will discover it some day, so don't say I didn't warn you-she went at him with "--he looked round him in doubt-" with the tongs."

"Nonsense!"

"I backed her up. When she quite finished, I let the first-cousin-once-removed have a bit of the rough side of my tongue, too. I don't pretend to be a patch on Alison, because when a girl-a strong girl, mind you-gets her back up and her tongue well slung, she can let out in a way to make a man's hair stand on end. His hair stood up, all that's left of it; he hadn't a word to say."

wait, you see, and then no telling what may happen. We'll stand in together, if you like."

“Thank you,” said Gilbert; "and where is

he?"

"Oh, ran away! Didn't stop to reflect that he's got seven years to wait. Ran away at once. Alison wouldn't have any dinner, though there was never mind. Came down when we'd finished, quite quiet, but looking dangerous-handy with her heels, you know-and wrote two letters. One was yours. I was rather glad to get out of the house myself. No telling whether she mightn't have rounded on me, as she's done once or twice before."

The boy, in answer to Gilbert's questions, stuck to the substantial basis of his story, although he embellished it by features which changed with each narration. Alison was not the heiress, because her father was never married. And this statement had been made coarsely, and even brutally.

Could it be true? and if so, what was Alison's position?

Gilbert lost no time in getting down to Clapham, leaving the boy behind to saunter through the streets and follow at his leisure.

He found Alison standing at the window of her own room, impatient and restless. She was transformed. The girl whom he had last seen, only a day or two before, soft, shrinking, gentle, stood before him with lips set firm, defiant pose, and eyes in which the glow of love and douce pensée had given place to a hard and cold light.

He took her hand and wanted to kiss her.

"No, Gilbert," she said harshly. "It was not to listen to love-stories that I sent for you. Perhaps, most likely, all that is over. You have heard-did the boy tell you?-what has happened?"

"

'He did tell me. Stephen Hamblin seeks to of your inheritance."

rob you

"And of my name, and of my father's honor, and of my mother's honor. He will try to rob me of all at once. There will be nothing left." Her voice failed her, but it was not to sob or cry that she broke down. "Tell me first, Gilbert, if you, too, were one of those who all along sus

pected this thing? My uncle says that everybody suspected it."

"It is false, Alison. Nobody, so far as I know, ever suspected such a thing-I the least of all men."

"But he said," she repeated-" he said that everybody always suspected.”

"It is false again, Alison-a thousand times false! Believe me, no one ever dreamed of suspecting such a thing."

She seemed not to hear him.

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'Yes, yes," she murmured impatiently. "It is of the other—that I think-the man who has done the mischief to me. Yesterday I knew nothing. Yesterday I was proud of my father, and of myself. I had everything that a girl wants, except him whom I had lost. I had a lover—”

"You have still, Alison. I will not be denied that title. I am your lover, whatever may happen."

So that I have been living for ten years in a fool's paradise, while people scoffed at me behind my back, and at my mother, and said hard things about my father. What a life for us both! and we never knew it." "You are kind, Gilbert," she said; “but you "Alison! Do not believe, do not think such must not love me any longer. I will not think of things." love any more. I will not drag you down. I mean it. I am resolved in this. I will not marry. I will not endure to feel that your own people would have to apologize for me, that perhaps my own children would have to blush for their mother's birth. Spare me that, Gilbert, if you love me, as I think you do.

"But if such things are true-and, whether I think them or not, they may be true. And one thing seems true, that my poor father left no will, and, unless I can prove his marriage, which-he —says never took place, I am a beggar in fortune as well as in honor. I have nothing."

"Yes, Alison "-he took her hand in his, and held it in the firm man's grasp which brought her comfort for the moment-" yes, Alison, you have something left. You have me; you have love. You have plenty of others who love you, but not so well. We shall only have to wait a little longer. You will not be able to hear your husband called a fortune-hunter. That is what it means, if it is true-all it ever shall mean to you and to me."

She shook her head, and the tears ran to her eyes. For some moments she could not speak. Then she conquered herself, drew back her hand, dashed the tears away, and became hard again.

"It means more, Gilbert. It means a great deal more. I am illegitimate."

She did not blush nor wince, but boldly pronounced the word, as if she would face the thing

at once.

"I must be ashamed of my mother; I must be ashamed of my father; I must never, never think of marriage or of love. This must be my farewell to you, dear Gilbert."

He seized her in his arms, and kissed her again and again, until she broke away from him. "My darling! Do you think I should let you go? Why, what is it? You have lost your name; all the more reason for taking another. And as for-for your father, you must try not to think unkindly-"

"Not unkindly," she said. "Never unkindly, only sorrowfully, because I thought him blameless."

'The misfortune has fallen on both of us alike," she went on, releasing herself a third time from Gilbert's hands. "It has been sweet for me to feel that I was loved, especially since my father's death. It is dreadful to give you up, Gilbert. But I am resolved. When my uncle told me this morning, my first thought was that I must give you up. Ever since then I have been thinking about it."

She drew a ring from her finger-the ring of her engagement. "Take it back, Gilbert. Our engagement is at an end. I give you back your vows with this ring. You shall marry no baseborn girl."

He refused to take the ring.

"I will take back neither vows nor ring, Alison. I am your lover. I swear that I will never be released unless you marry another man." "I shall marry no one," she said. “ 'Go away, Gilbert. You must see me no more. I forbid you the house, my poor Gilbert, as long as I have a house at all. Soon I shall have no house."

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Alison," cried the young man, “do not be cruel! I will not be sent away. Remember, I am always your lover."

She shook her head. There was resolution in every line of her figure, as she stood before him. He saw that remonstrance, entreaties, and prayers were useless-for the moment.

"You must not try to see me any more, Gilbert. Remember that every time I see you will bring me fresh pain and misery. I will go away

Each time her lover ceased to touch her, she somewhere I dare say my cousins will not let became hard and defiant again.

me starve-and hide myself and all this shame.

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