trace it. So the inquest was a mere show so far as getting at the
truth was concerned, and madame died and was buried in the mystery in
which she had lived.

Meantime, Leam had been sent to school, whence she was expected
to return a little more like other English girls than she had been
hitherto, and Mr. Dundas shut up Ford House--he went back to the
original name after madame's death--and left England to shake off in
travel the deadly despair that had fallen like a sickness on him and
taken all the flavor out of his life. He had never cared to search out
the real history of that fair beloved woman. Enough had come to his
knowledge, in the bills which had poured in from several Sherrington
tradesmen on the announcement of her marriage and then of her death,
to convince him that he had been duped in facts if not in feeling. For
among these bills was one from the local geologist for "a beginner's
cabinet of specimens," delivered just about the time when he,
Sebastian, had spent so many pleasant hours in arranging the fragments
which madame said represented both her knowledge and her lost
happiness; also one from the fancy repository, which sold everything,
for sundry water-color drawings and illuminated texts, a Table of
the Ten Commandments illustrated, and the like, which sufficiently
explained all on this side, and settled for ever the dead woman's
claims to the artistic and scientific merit with which Mr. Dundas and
the rector had credited her.

Also, certain ugly letters from a person of the name of Lowes, in
London, put him on the track, had he cared to follow it up, of a
deception even worse than that of pretended art or mock science. These
letters, written in the same handwriting as that wherein Julius de
Montfort, her brother-in-law, the present marquis, had told her of
the defalcations of the family solicitor and trustee, called Virginie,
Madame la Marquise de Montfort, plain Susan bluntly, and reminded her
of the screw that would be turned if the writer was not satisfied;
and were letters that demanded money, always money, as the price of
continued silence.

But Sebastian had loved his second wife too well to seek to know the
truth, if that truth would be to her discredit. He preferred to
be deceived; and he had what he preferred. He stifled all doubts,
darkened all chinks by which the obtrusive light might penetrate, kept
his love if not his faith unshaken, caring only to remember her as
beautiful, seduct