lawyers would not be adverse! That was now the
point of suspense.

The doctor, before he left her, bade her hold her peace, and say
nothing of Mary's fortune to any one till her rights had been
absolutely acknowledged. "It will be nothing not to have it," said
the doctor; "but it would be very bad to hear it was hers, and then
to lose it."

On the next morning, Dr Thorne deposited the remains of Sir Louis in
the vault prepared for the family in the parish church. He laid the
son where a few months ago he had laid the father,--and so the title
of Scatcherd became extinct. Their race of honour had not been long.

After the funeral, the doctor hurried up to London, and there we will
leave him.

CHAPTER XLIV

Saturday Evening and Sunday Morning

We must now go back a little and describe how Frank had been sent off
on special business to London. The household at Greshamsbury was at
this time in but a doleful state. It seemed to be pervaded, from the
squire down to the scullery-maid, with a feeling that things were
not going well; and men and women, in spite of Beatrice's coming
marriage, were grim-visaged, and dolorous. Mr Mortimer Gazebee,
rejected though he had been, still went and came, talking much to the
squire, much also to her ladyship, as to the ill-doings which were in
the course of projection by Sir Louis; and Frank went about the house
with clouded brow, as though finally resolved to neglect his one
great duty.

Poor Beatrice was robbed of half her joy: over and over again her
brother asked her whether she had yet seen Mary, and she was obliged
as often to answer that she had not. Indeed, she did not dare to
visit her friend, for it was hardly possible that they should
sympathise with each other. Mary was, to say the least, stubborn in
her pride; and Beatrice, though she could forgive her friend for
loving her brother, could not forgive the obstinacy with which Mary
persisted in a course which, as Beatrice thought, she herself knew to
be wrong.

And then Mr Gazebee came down from town, with an intimation that it
behoved the squire himself to go up that he might see certain learned
pundits, and be badgered in his own person at various dingy, dismal
chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Temple, and Gray's Inn Lane. It
was an invitation exactly of that sort which a good many years ago
was given to a certain duck.

"Will you, will you--will you, will you--come and be killed?"
Although Mr Gazebee