"Oh yes, he will," murmured Valerie, tears in her eyes. "I separated
you, Waldemar; you will let me see you reconciled?"

"My darling, yes! Poor old governor!" And Falkenstein stopped and
smoked vigorously, for kindness always touched him to the heart.

Bevan looked at him and was silent. "I say," he whispered, when he was a
moment alone with Valerie. "I didn't tell Waldemar, because I thought
you'd break it to him less blunderingly than I should, but the old
Count's breaking fast. I doubt if he'll live another week."

Bevan was right. In another week Falkenstein stood by the death-bed of
his father. He had a long interview with him alone, in which the old
Count detailed to him the fabricated slanders with which his brother had
blackened Valerie's name. With all his old passion he disowned the son
capable of such baseness, and constituted Waldemar his sole heir, save
the legacies left his daughters. He died in Waldemar's arms the night
they arrived in England, with his last word to him and Valerie, whom,
despite Virginia's opposition, he insisted on seeing. Falkenstein's
sorrow for his father was deep and unfeigned, like his character; but
his guardian angel, as he used to call her, was there to console him,
and, under the light of her smile, sorrow could not long pursue him.

On his brother, always his own enemy, and now the traducer of the woman
he loved, Waldemar's wrath fell heavily, and would, to a certainty, have
found some means of wreaking itself, but for the last wishes of his
father. As it was, he took a nobler, yet a more complete revenge. The
day of the funeral, when they were assembled for the reading of the
will, Maximilian, unconscious of his doom, came with his gentle face,
and tender melancholy air, to inherit, as he believed, Fairlie, and all
the personal property.

Stunned as by a spent ball, horror-struck, disbelieving his senses, he
heard his younger brother proclaimed the heir. It was a serious thing
to him, moreover, for--for a man of large expenses and great
ostentation--his own means were small. To secure every shilling he had
schemed, and planned, and lied; and now every shilling was taken from
him. Like the dog of AEsopian memory, trying to catch two pieces of meat,
he had lost his own!

After the last words were read, Waldemar stood a moment irresolute; then
he lifted his head, his dark eyes bright and clear, his mouth fixed and
firm, a proud calm displacing his old look of passion and