“Never with Mignon,” answered Bootles, resting his cheek against the tossed golden curls, and feeling as if he had done this faithful baby heart a moral injustice by his hours of anger and doubt. There was a moment of silence, broken by the nurse. “Have you heard, sir, how Mr. Gilchrist is?” she asked. Bootles roused himself. “He is dead, nurse. Died half an hour ago.” “Then, if you please, sir,” she asked, hesitatingly, “might I ask if it is true about Miss Mignon?” “Yes, it is true,” his face darkening. “Because, sir, Miss Mignon should have mourning,” she began, when Bootles cut her short. “I shall not allow her to wear mourning for Mr. Gilchrist,” he said, curtly; so the nurse dared say no more. Three days later the funeral took place; and if the facts of the dead man’s having acknowledged Miss Mignon as his child, and having admitted to Bootles that he had transferred her that night from his own quarters to Bootles’s rooms, created a sensation, it was as nothing to the intense surprise caused by the will, which was read, by the dead man’s desire, before all the officers of the regiment. In it he left his entire property to his daughter, Mary Gilchrist, now in the care of Captain Ferrers, and commonly known as Mignon, on condition that Captain Ferrers consented to be her sole guardian and trustee until she had attained the age of twenty-one, or until her marriage, provided it should be with her guardian’s sanction, and on the express understanding that Captain Ferrers should not give up the care of the child to her mother, even temporarily. To his wife, Helen Gilchrist, a copy of this testament was to be sent forthwith. Should any of the conditions be violated, the whole property of which he died possessed should go to his cousin, Lucian Gavor Gilchrist; but if the conditions be faithfully observed Captain Ferrers should have the power of applying any, or all, of the income arising from the estate for the use and maintenance of the said Mary Gilchrist. “Cwrazy!” murmured Lacy to Bootles, who listened in contemptuous silence, and wondered in no small dismay what kind of a life he should have if Mignon’s mother chose to make herself objectionable. But the will was not crazy at all; far from it. It was only a very cleverly thought-out plan for keeping mother and child apart. Bootles would take care not to endanger Mignon’s inheritance, and Gilchrist had taken advantage of it to carry out his animosity towards his wife to the bitter end. But of course there was one contingency he had never thought of or provided for—_marriage_. It was less than a week after Gilchrist’s death that Bootles received a note by hand, signed Helen Gilchrist. “Already!” he groaned, impatiently. “May I trouble you to send the child to see me for half an hour during this afternoon?” she said, and that was all.