Miss Grey was to bear the cost. It was soon a
very gratifying thing to the conspirators to know that no objection
whatever was likely to come from Mr. Blanchet. The poet accepted the
proffered favor not only with readiness, but with joy, and was
particularly delighted and flattered when he learned from Mary--what
Mary was specially ordered not to tell him--that Miss Grey was his
lady-patroness. He was to have been allowed vaguely to understand that
friends and admirers--whose name might have been legion--were combined
to secure justice for him. But Mary, in the pride of her heart, told him
all the truth, and her brother was greatly pleased and very proud. The
only stipulation he made was that the poems should be brought out in a
certain style, with such paper, such margins, such binding, and so on;
according to the pattern of another poet's works, whereof he was to
furnish a copy.

"She will be rich one day, Mary," he said, "and she can afford to do
something for art."

"Will she be rich?" Mary asked, eagerly. "Oh, I am so glad! She ought to
be a princess; she should be, if I were a queen."

"Yes, she'll be rich--what you and I would call rich," he said
carelessly. "Everything is to be hers when the stepmother dies; and I
believe she is in a galloping consumption."

"How do you know, Herbert?"

"You asked me to inquire, you know," he said, "and I did inquire. It was
easily done. Her father left his money and things to his second wife
only for her life. When she dies everything comes to your friend; and I
hear the woman can't live long. Keep all that to yourself, Mary."

"I am sure Minola doesn't know anything about it. I know she never asked
nor thought of it."

"Very likely, and the old people would not tell her. But it's true for
all that. So you see, Mary, we can afford to have justice done to these
poems of mine. If they are stones of any value, let them be put in
proper setting or not set at all. I am entitled to ask that much."

CHAPTER XII.

"LOVE, THE MESSENGER OF DEATH."

Victor Heron seemed to Minola about this time in a fair way to let his
great grievance go by altogether. He was filled with it personally when
he had time to think about it, but the grievances of somebody else were
always coming across his path, and drawing away his attention from his
own affairs. Minola very soon noticed this peculiarity in him, and at
first could hardly believe in its genuineness; it so conflicted with al