scarded by her own relations, and had taken
herself to live with a country tailor. As years had rolled by the
memory of what had really occurred in Applethwaite Church had become
indistinct; and, though the reader knows that that marriage was
capable of easy proof,--that there would have been but little
difficulty had the only difficulty consisted in proving that,--the
young heir and the distant Lovels were not assured of it. Their
interest was adverse, and they were determined to disbelieve. But the
Earl might, and probably would, leave all his wealth to a stranger.
He had never in any way noticed his heir. He cared for none that
bore his name. Those ties in the world which we call love, and deem
respectable, and regard as happy, because they have to do with
marriage and blood relationship as established by all laws since
the days of Moses, were odious to him and ridiculous in his sight,
because all obligations were distasteful to him,--and all laws,
except those which preserved to him the use of his own money. But now
there came up the great question whether he was mad or sane. It was
at once rumoured that he was about to leave the country, and fly back
to Sicily. Then it was announced that he was dead.

And he was dead. He had died at the age of sixty-seven, in the arms
of the woman he had brought there. His evil career was over, and his
soul had gone to that future life for which he had made it fit by the
life he had led here. His body was buried in Applethwaite churchyard,
in the further corner of which long, straggling valley parish Lovel
Grange is situated. At his grave there stood no single mourner;--but
the young lord was there, of his right, disdaining even to wear a
crape band round his hat. But the woman remained shut up in her own
chamber,--a difficulty to the young lord and his lawyer, who could
hardly tell the foreigner to pack and begone before the body of her
late--lover had been laid in the grave. It had been simply intimated
to her that on such a date,--within a week from the funeral,--her
presence in the house could not longer be endured. She had flashed
round upon the lawyer, who had attempted to make this award known to
her in broken French, but had answered simply by some words of scorn,
spoken in Italian to her waiting-maid.

Then the will was read in the presence of the young earl;--for there
was a will. Everything that the late lord had possessed was left, in
one line, to his best-beloved fri