tion. I wish, for Madeline's sake, that you had
not such a terrible bee in your bonnet."

"And you will go to the judge alone?"

"Oh, yes. I'll tell him--. What shall I tell him?"

"The truth, if you will. Good-bye, old fellow. You will not see me
again to-night, nor yet to-morrow in this house, unless I am more
fortunate than I have any right to hope to be."

"Faint heart never won fair lady, you know," said Augustus.

"My heart is faint enough then; but nevertheless I shall say what I
have got to say." And then he got up from the table.

"If you don't come down to us," said Augustus, "I shall come up to
you. But may God speed you. And now I'll go to the governor."

Felix made his way from the small breakfast-parlour in which they had
dined across the hall into the drawing-room, and there he found Lady
Staveley alone. "So the trial is not over yet, Mr. Graham?" she said.

"No; there will be another day of it."

"And what will be the verdict? Is it possible that she really forged
the will?"

"Ah! that I cannot say. You know that I am one of her counsel, Lady
Staveley?"

"Yes; I should have remembered that, and been more discreet. If you
are looking for Madeline, Mr. Graham, I think that she is in the
library."

"Oh! thank you;--in the library." And then Felix got himself out of
the drawing-room into the hall again not in the most graceful manner.
He might have gone direct from the drawing-room to the library, but
this he did not remember. It was very odd, he thought, that Lady
Staveley, of whose dislike to him he had felt sure, should have thus
sent him direct to her daughter, and have become a party, as it were,
to an appointment between them. But he had not much time to think of
this before he found himself in the room. There, sure enough, was
Madeline waiting to listen to his story. She was seated when he
entered, with her back to him; but as she heard him she rose, and,
after pausing for a moment, she stepped forward to meet him.

"You and Augustus were very late to-day," she said.

"Yes. I was kept there, and he was good enough to wait for me."

"You said you wanted to--speak to me," she said, hesitating a little,
but yet very little; "to speak to me alone; and so mamma said I had
better come in here. I hope you are not vexed that I should have told
her."

"Certainly not, Miss Staveley."

"Because I have no secrets from mamma."

"Nor do I wish that anything should be secret. I hate all secrec