was calculated to infuriate any man; and could she have risen from her grave and have known the result of her handiwork, her chagrin would have been only second to Skelton’s. Skelton did not, for a wonder, hate his wife’s memory for this. He was singularly just in his temperament, and he only hated the three lawyers, who pocketed each a great fee for making a will that palpably defeated its own object--a not uncommon occurrence. Although he had not fully returned the passionate devotion of his wife, he had yet loved her and felt deeply grateful to her, more for her devotion than her money; for the secret of Mrs. Skelton’s devotion had been the knowledge that, after all, Skelton had not married her for her money. Bulstrode always said that Skelton married her to spite her relations. Certain it is, the declaration of the great family to which she belonged, that she never should marry Skelton, did more to precipitate his offer than anything else. Afterwards his kindness to her, his delicacy, and the conviction that he did not know how absolutely she was mistress of her own fortune, deeply impressed her affectionate nature. In her last illness, which came before she had been married six months, the greed, the rapacity, the heartlessness of her own family was in marked contrast to Skelton’s delicate reticence. He declined to talk of her money, either to her or her lawyers; he left the room when she asked his wishes; he could not bargain with a creature so young, so tender, and so short a time for this world. But he reaped his reward, only with some results that nobody ever dreamed of, and which made Skelton in his heart denounce the whole tribe of lawyers as dolts, dunderheads, rascals, cheats, frauds, and incapables. But although he very much doubted whether he ever would have cared to risk the matrimonial yoke again, it was inexpressibly irritating to him to know that he could not, and that everybody knew he could not. He noticed, sardonically, the manœuvring mothers and designing daughters gave faint indications that he was not in the running; and worldly-wise young women would be likely to be shy of his attentions, for they could mean nothing. Skelton gave them no cause to be shy of him, but the whole thing humiliated him. There was that charming Sylvia--so thought Skelton, sitting in the library that afternoon with a book in his hand which he was not reading--she entertained him vastly; but no doubt that fool of a mother had canvassed his affairs and his status, and had put notions in the girl’s head. He was half sorry that he had asked her there, for to-morrow he meant to make a fair start on his book, to which he had so far written only the introduction. The next day Sylvia and her father came over to luncheon, Mrs. Shapleigh being ill--to Skelton’s great joy. Bulstrode rarely came to the table, and never when ladies were present; so there were only Skelton and Lewis Pryor and old Tom Shapleigh and his daughter.