lour, voice, expression, were perfectly at command.
She knew it to be a cowardice to wear any mask: but she had been burnt,
horribly burnt: how much so you may guess from the supple dissimulation
of such a bold clear-visaged girl. She conquered the sneers of the world
in her soul: but her sensitive skin was yet alive to the pangs of the
scorching it had been subjected to when weak, helpless, and betrayed by
Evan, she stood with no philosophic parent to cry fair play for her,
among the skilful torturers of Elburne House.

Sir Franks had risen and walked to the window.

'News?' said Lady Jocelyn, wheeling round in her chair.

The one eyebrow up of the easy-going baronet signified trouble of mind.
He finished his third perusal of a letter that appeared to be written in
a remarkably plain legal hand, and looking as men do when their
intelligences are just equal to the comprehension or expression of an
oath, handed the letter to his wife, and observed that he should be found
in the library. Nevertheless he waited first to mark its effect on Lady
Jocelyn. At one part of the document her forehead wrinkled slightly.

'Doesn't sound like a joke!' he said.

She answered:

'No.'

Sir Franks, apparently quite satisfied by her ready response, turned on
his heel and left the room quickly.

An hour afterward it was rumoured and confirmed that Juliana Bonner had
willed all the worldly property she held in her own right, comprising
Beckley Court, to Mr. Evan Harrington, of Lymport, tailor. An abstract of
the will was forwarded. The lawyer went on to say, that he had conformed
to the desire of the testatrix in communicating the existence of the
aforesaid will six days subsequent to her death, being the day after her
funeral.

There had been railing and jeering at the Countess de Saldar, the clever
outwitted exposed adventuress, at Elburne House and Beckley Court. What
did the crowing cleverer aristocrats think of her now?

On Rose the blow fell bitterly. Was Evan also a foul schemer? Was he of a
piece with his intriguing sister? His close kinship with the Countess had
led her to think baseness possible to him when it was confessed by his
own mouth once. She heard black names cast at him and the whole of the
great Mel's brood, and incapable of quite disbelieving them merited,
unable to challenge and rebut them, she dropped into her recent state of
self-contempt: into her lately-instilled doubt whether it really was in
Nature's