Some few, sad details, it gave of Cissy’s last illness and death (the first Marion had received, for the elder Mrs. Archer had been ill, and unable to reply to Mr. Vere’s enquiries), the suddenness of which had been its most distressing feature, for she had suffered little, poor Cissy. Some blunt, strong words of his own agony, at losing, her, which told that poor George Archer’s heart was all but broken. And then her last message to Marion, when too nearly gone almost to speak. George had written them down, he said, at once, for fear of possible mistake—the faint, fluttering words of the tender, affectionate heart. “Tell dear May,” she had said, “I have done what she wished, and I hope they will be very happy.” That was all—the message, and a little lock of the bright fair hair Marion knew so well, cut off, gently and reverently, from his dead wife’s head, by the husband she had loved so devotedly. All, but how much! Enough to turn the grey world rosy again, to bathe all around her in golden light, to fill her heart with joy and thankfulness, which she tried in vain to banish by the recollection that today her father was to be buried. “Oh, am I wicked, am I heartless?” she asked herself. “God forgive me if I am. But I was so broken down, so hopeless, and now all seems so different! By now even, this very day perhaps, Ralph will know it all, will have received Cissy’s letter, explaining away all the trouble, so far, at least, as I was concerned. Sooner even than to-day, for Cissy must have written before her illness began. Yes, sooner, surely. Any day I may look for a letter from him if, as I feel convinced, some mistake or misapprehension has been at the root of his strange silence.” And in proportion to her previous hopelessness and despair, was her present sanguine belief that all would soon be well. In the afternoon of that day, when “all was over,” as people say, the will read, and the few guests departed, Harry ran upstairs to beg Marion to come down to see Mr. Baldwin, who was going to remain with them for a day or two. Her presence at the reading of the will had been suggested, but not after all considered advisable; for as Harry, poor boy, had feared, the will itself, and still more Mr. Crooke the lawyer’s comments thereupon, had revealed that the state of the dead man’s affairs was the reverse of satisfactory, and it was thought well that Marion should be spared the shock to her feelings of such a disclosure in public. Some hint of this Harry gave to his sister as they went downstairs together. He was somewhat disappointed that she did not say again, as she had said the other day, “I don’t care about money, Harry, truly I don’t.” “After all, I fear she does care,” thought her brother. Mr. Baldwin was in the library, Harry said, and thither they went.