for this treasure? Never!"

"No, I don't think that it would be nice for you to do that, Millicent,"
Mark said. "Mrs. Cunningham and I have been talking it over. We thought
that the best plan would be for her to take a house in London, and go
there with you; you would have the advantages of good masters.

"Then you were saying only a short time since that you would like to
learn the harp and take lessons in painting. There would be time enough
to think about what you would do with respect to this house afterward."

"It is all horrible," Millicent said, bursting into tears, "and I shall
always feel that I have robbed you."

"But I don't feel so in the least," Mark urged. "I was not in the
smallest degree put out when my father told me about it. I have always
had a fancy for wandering about the world, as my uncle did, and doing
something to distinguish myself, instead of settling down for life to be
a country magistrate and a squire. Of course it came as a surprise, but
I can assure you that it was not an altogether unpleasant one. What
can a man want more than a nice little estate of 500 pounds a year and
20,000 pounds in money?"

"It is all very well to say that, but as you said to me just now, you
may see it in a different light some day."

Then she sat thinking for some time. "At any rate," she went on at last,
"I don't see why anyone should know about it now. If the house is to be
shut up and you are going away, why need anyone know anything about it?
My father's wish was that I should not have people making love to me
just because I was an heiress; after all that has been done, it would be
wicked to go against his wishes. I suppose the interest of this 15,000
pounds would be enough for Mrs. Cunningham and I to live comfortably on
in London?"

"Yes," Mark said; "it will, at 5 per cent, bring in 750 pounds a year."

"Then I shall remain Millicent Conyers to the world. There is nothing to
prevent that, is there?" she said almost defiantly.

"No," he replied thoughtfully. "The rents of this estate might
accumulate. I suppose the solicitors would see after that; and as I
shall be away it will, of course, make no difference to me. Were I to
stay in the neighborhood I could not consent to live as my father did,
in a false position; but even then I might give out that the property
had only been left to my father during his lifetime, and that it had now
gone elsewhere, without saying whom it had gone to. However, as