his property he divided into two equal portions--one for
Agnes Fleming, and the other for their child, if it should be born
alive, and ever come of age. If it were a girl, it was to inherit the
money unconditionally; but if a boy, only on the stipulation that in
his minority he should never have stained his name with any public act
of dishonour, meanness, cowardice, or wrong. He did this, he said, to
mark his confidence in the other, and his conviction--only strengthened
by approaching death--that the child would share her gentle heart, and
noble nature. If he were disappointed in this expectation, then the
money was to come to you: for then, and not till then, when both
children were equal, would he recognise your prior claim upon his
purse, who had none upon his heart, but had, from an infant, repulsed
him with coldness and aversion.'

'My mother,' said Monks, in a louder tone, 'did what a woman should
have done. She burnt this will. The letter never reached its
destination; but that, and other proofs, she kept, in case they ever
tried to lie away the blot. The girl's father had the truth from her
with every aggravation that her violent hate--I love her for it
now--could add. Goaded by shame and dishonour he fled with his
children into a remote corner of Wales, changing his very name that his
friends might never know of his retreat; and here, no great while
afterwards, he was found dead in his bed. The girl had left her home,
in secret, some weeks before; he had searched for her, on foot, in
every town and village near; it was on the night when he returned home,
assured that she had destroyed herself, to hide her shame and his, that
his old heart broke.'

There was a short silence here, until Mr. Brownlow took up the thread
of the narrative.

'Years after this,' he said, 'this man's--Edward Leeford's--mother came
to me. He had left her, when only eighteen; robbed her of jewels and
money; gambled, squandered, forged, and fled to London: where for two
years he had associated with the lowest outcasts. She was sinking
under a painful and incurable disease, and wished to recover him before
she died. Inquiries were set on foot, and strict searches made. They
were unavailing for a long time, but ultimately successful; and he went
back with her to France.'

'There she died,' said Monks, 'after a lingering illness; and, on her
death-bed, she bequeathed these secrets to me, together with her
unquenchable and