, if I must be alone, shall only want one room for
myself. What should I do with the house?" Then there was silence
again for a while.

"I will give you a final answer on Saturday," he said at last. "I
shall see Margaret before Saturday."

After that he took his candle and went to bed. It was then Tuesday,
and Lady Ball was obliged to be contented with the promise thus made
to her.

On Wednesday he did nothing. On the Thursday morning he received a
letter which nearly drove him mad. It was addressed to him at the
office of the Shadrach Fire Insurance Company, and it reached him
there. It was as follows--

Littlebath, -- June, 186--.

SIR,

You are no doubt fully aware of all the efforts which I
have made during the last six months to secure from your
grasp the fortune which did belong to my dear--my dearest
friend, Margaret Mackenzie. For as my dearest friend
I shall ever regard her, though she and I have been
separated by machinations of the nature of which she, as I
am fully sure, has never been aware. I now ascertain that
some of the inferior law courts have, under what pressure
I know not, set aside the will which was made twenty years
ago in favour of the Mackenzie family, and given to you
the property which did belong to them. That a superior
court would reverse the judgment, I believe there is
little doubt; but whether or no the means exist for me
to bring the matter before the higher tribunals of the
country I am not yet aware. Very probably I may have
no such power, and in such case, Margaret Mackenzie is,
to-day, through your means, a beggar.

Since this matter has been before the public you have
ingeniously contrived to mitigate the wrath of public
opinion by letting it be supposed that you purposed to
marry the lady whose wealth you were seeking to obtain by
legal quibbles. You have made your generous intentions
very public, and have created a romance that has been, I
must say, but little becoming to your age. If all be true
that I heard when I last saw Miss Mackenzie at Twickenham,
you have gone through some ceremony of proposing to her.
But, as I understand, that joke is now thought to have
been carried far enough; and as the money is your own, you
intend to enjoy yourself as a lion, leaving the lamb to
perish in the wilderness.

Now I call upon you to assert, under your own name and
with