No one ever knew in “society” of the secret visit made by Katharine Vreeland, under Hugh Conyers’ escort, to take a last look at the features of the man who had “failed along the whole line of life,” after all. The defeated “young Napoleon!” The Lochinvar of the West! But the peace which he had never known had settled upon Vreeland’s pallid face. Conyers had gravely given Mrs. Vreeland a few words of caution as to the late “envied of all his set.” “I thank you, sir,” calmly said the marble-faced woman. “I have buried his past forever, and your protecting counsels are not in vain; for, I unfortunately, knew him as he was. I shall leave New York forever, for, penniless as I am, I will have now to earn my bitter daily bread, but at least in some other place than here.” Conyers gazed wonderingly at her. “Did you not know that Senator Garston has left you half his fortune? You will be a rich woman. I have seen a certified copy of the will.” And then the pale-faced woman reeled at this last proof of a fidelity reaching beyond the grave. Garston had been game to the core! Conyers sprang to the side of the fainting woman, who murmured, with trembling lips, “He loved me! He loved me, at the last!” With an infinite pity in his heart, Conyers gazed at the broken-hearted lonely widow. “Here is some strange new mystery,” he mused. “Thank God that it is sacred from me.” And then he told her of all the cautious actions of the Trust Company, which was now only awaiting the arrival of Miss Romaine Garland for the proper legal notifications. And so, the romance of a sweet sin remained sealed from all hearts but the one throbbing in Katharine Vreeland’s guilty bosom! And thus in a week two young women who had never met before in life listened, with grave lawyers at their sides, to the publication of the formal news of an equal division of Garston’s great fortune between a now widowed ward, of whose past history the world knew nothing, and Miss Romaine Garland, at whose side Mrs. Elaine Willoughby, Judge Endicott and Hugh Conyers sat as a loving bodyguard. Even the “hardy reporter” was baffled by the guarded solemnity of the Surrogate proceedings. Scandal slept on its arms for once! Katharine Norreys Vreeland saw that the beautiful stranger was robed in deep mourning like herself, and she started back in surprise as the lovely face was unveiled when Elaine Willoughby brought the two heiresses together in a private room. “It is only to you here that I will say,” solemnly remarked the Lady of Lakemere, “that the settlement of the estate business will not require you to meet again. The Trust Company will properly close up all the details, and your personal lawyers can arrange all your affairs separately with them. “I know,” she slowly said, with a broken voice, “that Senator Garston left no personal wishes, and that his trust for each of you was merely private and a personal one. He had no near relatives to quarrel with his final dispositions.”