It seemed as if poor Helen had felt for some time before her death that the end was fast approaching. They found not only her will, which had been executed when she was last in London, but divers letters, not to be delivered till after her decease. There was a very large legacy to Grace Beauclere, and some minor ones to old servants and pensioners. All the residue of the vast sum at her disposal was bequeathed to her father, without condition or reserve. Her jewels--with the exception of Lord Clydesdale's gifts before and after marriage, which reverted to him--were left to Mrs. Brabazon. There was no letter for Wyverne, and no mention of his name; but Maud sent him a casket, which had been in her hands for some time past. It contained three of Alan's letters, a few trifling relics of their brief engagement, a thick packet in Helen's handwriting, bearing a comparatively recent date, and a small exquisite miniature, taken before her beauty had begun to fade. That casket was the crowning jewel of the testament. The void that her death made in society was not easily filled up; but after awhile the world rolled on, as if she had never been. The Squire looked broken and grey, and more careworn than when his affairs had been most desperate. He knew scarcely anything of the terrible truth, but a vague remorse haunted and bore him down. Lady Mildred's face was inscrutable as ever, but her smiles grew rarer and more artificial day by day. Max Vavasour, after the first emotion of sorrow, troubled himself little about what was past and gone. If he ever realized his sister's sacrifice, he looked upon it as a great political necessity--to be deplored, but not to be repented of. Maud Brabazon felt as if she could never bring herself to wear the jewels that she inherited; but she got over these scruples in time; and, at the first drawing-room of the following season, her sapphires and diamonds were generally envied and admired. When I said that in Alan Wyverne there was little outward alteration, I ought to have limited the assertion. Men would have told you so; but maids and matrons are sharper-sighted, and their report would have been very different: _they_ knew how utterly he was changed. Their society still had an attraction for him; and he was frank, and kind, and gentle as ever, when a woman was in presence; but a word never escaped his lips that could be construed into anything warmer than friendship and courtesy. The most intrepid coquette refrained instinctively from wasting her _calineries_ and seductions there: she might as well have sought a lover in a deserted statue-gallery of the Vatican.