usually smiling countenance at
the mere suggestion of the subject was very ominous. It would be better,
far better, for Lucy if she would yield at once and say nothing about
it. But that was not what it was natural for her to do. She would stand
by her duty to her father, just as, were it assailed, she would stand by
her duty to her husband; but she would never be got to understand that
the second cancelled the first. The Dowager Lady Randolph watched the
young household with something of the interest with which a playgoer
watches the stage. She felt sure that the explosion would come, and that
a breath, a touch, might bring it on at any moment; and then what was to
be the issue? Would Lucy yield? would Lucy conquer? or would the easy
temper with which everybody credited Sir Tom support this trial? The old
lady, who knew him so well, believed that there was a certain fiery
element below, and she trembled for the peace of the household which was
so happy and triumphant, and had no fear whatever for itself. She
thought of "the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below," of the calm
that precedes a storm, and many other such images, and so frightened did
she become at the dangers she had conjured up that she put the will
hurriedly out of her thoughts, as Sir Tom had done, and would think no
more of it. "Sufficient," she said to herself, "is the evil to the day."

In the meantime, the married pair smiled serenely at any doubts of their
perfect union, and Lucy felt a great satisfaction in showing her
husband's aunt (who had not thought her good enough for Sir Tom,
notwithstanding that she so warmly promoted the match) how satisfied he
was with his home, and how exultant in his heir.

In the following chapters the reader will discover what was the cause
which made the Dowager shake her head when she got into the carriage to
drive to the railway at the termination of her visit. It was all very
pretty and very delightful, and thoroughly satisfactory; but still Lady
Randolph, the elder, shook her experienced head.

CHAPTER III.

OLD MR. TREVOR'S WILL.

Lucy Trevor, when she married Sir Thomas Randolph, was the heiress of so
great a fortune that no one ventured to state it in words or figures.
She was not old enough, indeed, to have the entire control of it in her
hands, but she had unlimited control over a portion of it in a certain
sense, not for her own advantage, but for the aggrandisement of others.
Her father, wh