rriage which would make her so
totally bankrupt both in wealth and rank.

Mr. Somers did go once to Hap House, at Herbert's instigation; but
very little came of his visit. He had always disliked Owen, regarding
him as an unthrift, any close connexion with whom could only bring
contamination on the Fitzgerald property; and Owen had returned the
feeling tenfold. His pride had been wounded by what he had considered
to be the agent's insolence, and he had stigmatised Mr. Somers to his
friends as a self-seeking, mercenary prig. Very little, therefore,
came of the visit. Mr. Somers, to give him his due, had attempted to
do his best; being anxious, for Herbert's sake, to conciliate Owen;
perhaps having--and why not?--some eye to the future agency. But Owen
was hard, and cold, and uncommunicative,--very unlike what he had
before been to Mr. Prendergast. But then Mr. Prendergast had never
offended his pride.

"You may tell my cousin Herbert," he said, with some little special
emphasis on the word cousin, "that I shall be glad to see him, as
soon as he feels himself able to meet me. It will be for the good of
us both that we should have some conversation together. Will you tell
him, Mr. Somers, that I shall be happy to go to him, or to see him
here? Perhaps my going to Castle Richmond, during the present illness
of Sir Thomas, may be inconvenient." And this was all that Mr. Somers
could get from him.

In a very short time the whole story became known to everybody round
the neighbourhood. And what would have been the good of keeping it
secret? There are some secrets,--kept as secrets because they cannot
well be discussed openly,--which may be allowed to leak out with so
much advantage! The day must come, and that apparently at no distant
time, when all the world would know the fate of that Fitzgerald
family; when Sir Owen must walk into the hall of Castle Richmond, the
undoubted owner of the mansion and demesne. Why then keep it secret?
Herbert openly declared his wish to Mr. Somers that there should be
no secret in the matter. "There is no disgrace," he said, thinking
of his mother; "nothing to be ashamed of, let the world say what it
will."

Down in the servants' hall the news came to them gradually, whispered
about from one to another. They hardly understood what it meant,
or how it had come to pass; but they did know that their master's
marriage had been no marriage, and that their master's son was no
heir. Mrs. Jones sa