t disposition, the
natural disposition; he had left the bulk of it as childless English
gentlemen have ever been wont to leave their wealth--to the eldest son
of the eldest son of his family. The Honourable Marmaduke Courtney
Ashurst, the testator, was the scion of a great house, which recent
agricultural changes, he regretted to say, had relatively impoverished;
he had come to the succour of that great house, as such a scion should,
with his property acquired by honest industry elsewhere. It was fitting
and reasonable that Mr. Ashurst should wish to see the Kynaston peerage
regain, in the person of the amiable and accomplished young nobleman
whom he had the honour to represent, some portion of its ancient dignity
and splendour.

But jealousy and greed intervened. (Here he frowned at Harold.) Mr.
Harold Tillington, the son of one of Mr. Ashurst's married sisters, cast
longing eyes, as he had tried to suggest to them, on his cousin Lord
Southminster's natural heritage. The result, he feared, was an unnatural
intrigue. Mr. Harold Tillington formed the acquaintance of a young
lady--should we say young lady?--(he withered me with his glance)--well,
yes, a lady, indeed, by birth and education, but an adventuress by
choice--a lady who, brought up in a respectable, though not (he must
admit) a distinguished sphere, had lowered herself by accepting the
position of a lady's maid, and had trafficked in patent American cycles
on the public high-roads of Germany and Switzerland. This clever and
designing woman (he would grant her ability--he would grant her good
looks) had fascinated Mr. Tillington--that was the theory he ventured to
lay before the jury to-day; and the jury would see for themselves that
whatever else the young lady might be, she had distinctly a certain
outer gift of fascination. It was for them to decide whether Miss Lois
Cayley had or had not suggested to Mr. Harold Tillington the design of
substituting a forged will for Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst's undeniable
testament. He would point out to them her singular connection with the
missing man Higginson, whom the young lady herself described as a rogue,
and from whom she had done her very best to dissociate herself in this
court--but ineffectually. Wherever Miss Cayley went, the man Higginson
went independently. Such frequent recurrences, such apt juxtapositions
could hardly be set down to mere accidental coincidence.

He went on to insinuate that Higginson and I had c