on his crutch-stick,
his head sunk upon his breast, muttering to himself as he went; and thus
he vanished from them, like the spectre of some terrible ancestor which
had returned from the grave to announce the coming of calamity to a
doomed race. His grandson looked after him, with an expression of
intense displeasure.

'And so, Lady Maulevrier,' he exclaimed, turning to his grandmother, 'I
have borne a title that never belonged to me, and enjoyed the possession
of another man's estates all this time, thanks to your pretty little
plot. A very respectable position for your grandson to occupy, upon my
life!'

Lord Hartfield lifted his hand with a warning gesture.

'Spare her,' he said. 'She is in no condition to endure your
reproaches.'

Spare her--yes. Fate had not spared her. The beautiful face--beautiful
even in age and decay--changed suddenly as she looked at them--the mouth
became distorted, the eyes fixed: and then the heavy head fell back upon
the pillow--the paralysed form, wholly paralysed now, lay like a thing
of stone. It never moved again. Consciousness was blotted out for ever
in that moment. The feeble pulses of heart and brain throbbed with
gradually diminishing power for a night and a day; and in the twilight
of that dreadful day of nothingness the last glimmer of the light died
in the lamp, and Lady Maulevrier and the burden of her sin were beyond
the veil.

Viscount Haselden, _alias_ Lord Maulevrier, held a long consultation
with Lord Hartfield on the night of his grandmother's death, as to what
steps ought to be taken in relation to the real Earl of Maulevrier: and
it was only at the end of a serious and earnest discussion that both
young men came to the decision that Lady Maulevrier's secret ought to be
kept faithfully to the end. Assuredly no good purpose could be achieved
by letting the world know of old Lord Maulevrier's existence. A
half-lunatic octogenarian could gain nothing by being restored to rights
and possessions which he had most justly forfeited. All that justice
demanded was that the closing years of his life should be made as
comfortable as care and wealth could make them; and Hartfield and
Haselden took immediate steps to this end. But their first act was to
send the old earl's treasure chest under safe convoy to the India House,
with a letter explaining how this long-hidden wealth, brought from India
by Lord Maulevrier, had been discovered among other effects in a
lumber-room a