ome at
Beechwood at your earliest convenience and dine with the family. My
daughter and I will have a most hearty welcome for you. Any date
convenient to you which you may set will be agreeable to us.

"Trusting that we may have the pleasure of seeing you very soon, I
remain, yours very truly,

"MRS. HORACE FAIRFAX, Beechwood."

The bogus Lester Armstrong laid the letter down and looked abstractedly
out of the window.

"Of all places in the world, to think that I should be invited there,"
he mused. "While I have just been wondering how they took Faynie's
elopement--and never hearing from her since--and wondering how in the
world I was to discover all that--lo! a way is opened to me!"

Then his thoughts flew back to that stormy wedding night, and that
midnight scene in the little inn, when the girl he had just wedded,
believing her to be an heiress, revealed to him the exasperating truth,
that only that night her father had disinherited her, making a new will
in favor of her stepmother and her daughter Claire. The plan which
Halloran had laid out was to wait a reasonable time, then put in an
appearance, stating that he was Faynie's husband, and that she had just
died, and claim her portion of the estate. Every detail had been most
carefully mapped out; but here he saw an easier way of gaining that same
fortune without the trouble of litigation--marry the girl Claire.

They would never know anything about that previous marriage with Faynie,
and the dead could tell no secrets.

"I'll go," he muttered. "I shall reply at once, telling her she may
expect me two days hence--let me see, this is Tuesday; I will dine with
her Thursday, and, at least, see what the girl Claire looks like. It
would be the proper caper to gather in as many fortunes as drift my way.
I suppose I shall run through half a dozen of them ere I reach the end
of my tether."

All in due season his letter of acceptance reached Mrs. Fairfax, and she
was highly elated over it.

She had seized upon her neighborly acquaintance with the late Mr. Marsh
to invite to her home the young man who had fallen heir to his
millions, in order that her daughter Claire might win him--if it were a
possibility.

She had succeeded in forcing Faynie to remain beneath that roof, even
after informing her that she was disinherited--dependent upon her
stepmother--by saying that it was her father's wish that she should thus
remain for at least