ary
misdescription can affect such a contract?"

"Enough--enough!" he gasped. "A great load is gone!--the rest is with
God. Beloved Rosamond"--The slight whisper was no longer audible; sighs,
momently becoming fainter and weaker, followed--ceased, and in little
more than ten minutes after the last word was spoken, life was extinct. I
rang the bell, and turned to leave the room, and as I did so surprised
Martin on the other side of the bed. He had been listening, screened by
the thick damask curtains, and appeared to be a good deal sobered. I
made no remark, and proceeded on down stairs. The man followed, and as
soon as we had gained the hall said quickly, yet hesitatingly,
"Sir--sir!"

"Well, what have you to say?"

"Nothing very particular, sir. But did I understand you to say just now,
that it was of no consequence if a man married in a false name?"

"That depends upon circumstances. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, nothing--nothing; only I have heard it's transportation, especially
if there's money."

"Perhaps you are right. Anything else?"

"No," said he, opening the door; "that's all--mere curiosity."

I heard nothing more of the family for some time, except with reference
to Major Stewart's personal property, about L4000 bequeathed to his
daughter, with a charge thereon of an annuity of L20 a year for Mrs.
Leslie, the aged house-keeper; the necessary business connected with
which we transacted. But about a twelvemonth after the major's death, the
marriage of the elder Thorneycroft with a widow of the same name as
himself, and a cousin, the paper stated, was announced; and pretty nearly
a year and a half subsequent to the appearance of this ominous paragraph,
the decease of Mr. Henry Thorneycroft at Lausanne, in Switzerland, who
had left, it was added in the newspaper stock-phrase of journalism, a
young widow and two sons to mourn their irreparable loss. Silence again,
as far as we were concerned, settled upon the destinies of the
descendants of our old military client, till one fine morning a letter
from Dr. Hampton informed us of the sudden death by apoplexy, a few days
previously, of the East India director. Dr. Hampton further hinted that
he should have occasion to write us again in a day or two, relative to
the deceased's affairs, which, owing to Mr. Thorneycroft's unconquerable
aversion to making a will, had, it was feared, been left in an extremely
unsatisfactory state. Dr. Hampton had written to us, at the w