g his cigar, threw away its glowing end, and
shook his head in the negative.

"You will think me as sentimental as I am garrulous," went on Helmsley,
"when I tell you that it was merely--love!"

Vesey raised himself in his chair and sat upright, opening his eyes in
astonishment.

"Love!" he echoed. "God bless my soul! I should have thought that you,
of all men in the world, could have won that easily!"

Helmsley turned towards him with a questioning look.

"Why should I 'of all men in the world' have won it?" he asked.
"Because I am rich? Rich men are seldom, if ever, loved for
themselves--only for what they can give to their professing lovers."

His ordinarily soft tone had an accent of bitterness in it, and Sir
Francis Vesey was silent.

"Had I remained poor,--poor as I was when I first started to make my
fortune," he went on, "I might possibly have been loved by some woman,
or some friend, for myself alone. For as a young fellow I was not
bad-looking, nor had I, so I flatter myself, an unlikable disposition.
But luck always turned the wheel in my favour, and at thirty-five I was
a millionaire. Then I 'fell' in love,--and married on the faith of that
emotion, which is always a mistake. 'Falling in love' is not loving. I
was in the full flush of my strength and manhood, and was sufficiently
proud of myself to believe that my wife really cared for me. There I was
deceived. She cared for my millions. So it chances that the only real
love I have ever known was the unselfish 'home' affection,--the love of
my mother and father and sister 'out in ole Virginny,' 'a love so sweet
it could not last,' as Shelley sings. Though I believe it can and does
last,--for my soul (or whatever that strange part of me may be which
thinks beyond the body) is always running back to that love with a full
sense of certainty that it is still existent."

His voice sank and seemed to fail him for a moment. He looked up at the
large, bright star shining steadily above him.

"You are silent, Vesey," he said, after a pause, speaking with an effort
at lightness; "and wisely too, for I know you have nothing to say--that
is, nothing that could affect the position. And you may well ask, if you
choose, to what does all this reminiscent old man's prattle tend? Simply
to this--that you have been urging me for the last six months to make my
will in order to replace the one which was previously made in favour of
my sons, and which is now destroyed,