dictated instructions for a new will, leaving his wealth (excepting
certain legacies to old friends) to the hospitals of Great Britain and
Ireland. His lawyer lost no time in carrying out the instructions. The
new will was ready for signature (the old will having been destroyed by
his own hand), when the doctors sent a message to say that their patient
was insensible, and might die in that condition."

"Did the doctors prove to be right?"

"Perfectly right. Our wretched landlady, as next of kin, succeeded, not
only to the fortune, but (under the deed of partnership) to her late
brother's place in the firm: on the one easy condition of resuming the
family name. She calls herself "Miss Benshaw." But as a matter of legal
necessity she is set down in the deed as "Mrs. Cosway Benshaw." Her
partners only now know that her husband is living, and that you are
the Cosway whom she privately married. Will you take a little breathing
time? or shall I go on, and get done with it?"

Cosway signed to him to go on.

"She doesn't in the least care," Stone proceeded, "for the exposure.
'I am the head partner,' she says 'and the rich one of the firm;
they daren't turn their backs on Me.' You remember the information I
received--in perfect good faith on his part--from the man who keeps
the inn? The visit to the London doctor, and the assertion of failing
health, were adopted as the best means of plausibly severing the lady's
connection (the great lady now!) with a calling so unworthy of her as
the keeping of an inn. Her neighbors at the seaport were all deceived
by the stratagem, with two exceptions. They were both men--vagabonds who
had pertinaciously tried to delude her into marrying them in the days
when she was a widow. They refused to believe in the doctor and the
declining health; they had their own suspicion of the motives which had
led to the sale of the inn, under very unfavorable circumstances; and
they decided on going to London, inspired by the same base hope of
making discoveries which might be turned into a means of extorting
money."

"She escaped them, of course," said Cosway. "How?"

"By the help of her lawyer, who was not above accepting a handsome
private fee. He wrote to the new landlord of the inn, falsely announcing
his client's death, in the letter which I repeated to you in the railway
carriage on our journey to London. Other precautions were taken to
keep up the deception, on which it is needless to dwell. You