nd up affairs. The
elaborate will of twenty years earlier, with its many legacies and
bequests, had been cancelled by Sir Arthur only six weeks before his
death. A very short document had been substituted for it, making Douglas
and a certain Marmaduke Falloden, his uncle and an eminent K.C., joint
executors, and appointing Douglas and Lady Laura guardians of the
younger children. Whatever property might remain "after the payment of
my just debts" was to be divided in certain proportions between Douglas
and his brother and sisters.

The estates, with the exception of the lands immediately surrounding
the castle, were to be sold to the tenants, and the dates of the auction
were already fixed. For the castle itself, negotiations had been opened
with an enormously successful soap-boiler from the north, but an
American was also in the market, and the Falloden solicitors were
skilfully playing the two big fish against each other. The sale of the
pictures would come before the court early in October. Meanwhile the
beautiful Romney--the lady in black--still looked down upon her stripped
and impoverished descendant; and Falloden, whose sole companion she
often was through dreary hours, imagined her sometimes as tragic or
reproachful, but more commonly as mocking him with a malicious
Irish glee.

There would be some few thousand pounds left for himself when all was
settled. He was determined to go into Parliament, and his present
intention was to stand for a Merton fellowship, and read for the bar. If
other men could make three or four thousand a year within three years or
so of being called, why not he? His character had steeled under the
pressure of disaster. He realised with a clearer intelligence, day by
day, all that had gone from him--his father--his inheritance--the
careless ease and self-assurance that goes with the chief places at the
feast of life. But if he must now drop to the lower rooms, it would not
be "with shame" that he would do that, or anything else. He felt within
himself a driving and boundless energy, an iron will to succeed. There
was even a certain bitter satisfaction in measuring himself against the
world without the props and privileges he had hitherto possessed. He was
often sore and miserable to his heart's depths; haunted by black
regrets and compunction he could not get rid of. All the same it was
his fixed resolve to waste no thoughts on mere happiness. His business
was to make a place for himsel