“I am not afraid of that,” Francis answered, decisively. “No, the man meant to be a scoundrel, I dare say; but my little Susy’s artless confidence touched his heart at the very last, perhaps, and he _could_ not be such a villain as to deceive her. Rely upon it, Mr. Kursdale, the marriage was a genuine marriage, and I shall live to see my cousin righted, and to divide my uncle Oliver’s money with her.” Mr. Kursdale stared at his client in blank amazement. “You would--do that?” he asked, after a pause. “Of course I would. Poor little ill-used darling! The money was hers, every penny of it, by right. I--I meant at first to have restored it all to her; but new claims have arisen for me, and I can only give her half the fortune that should have been her own.” The solicitor stifled a groan. “And now how am I to find Susy?” asked Francis. “This registration business gives us a new clue, doesn’t it?” “Unquestionably. We can, at any rate, hope to find the two witnesses, Mary and Jemima Banks, and from them we may discover your cousin’s present whereabouts. I’ll send a clerk to these Banks people to-morrow.” “Do you know I think I’d rather go and look for them myself, and at once,” said Francis. “I’ve been very neglectful of Susy’s interests lately, and I feel as if I ought to do something to make up for my neglect. I’ll go myself, Mr. Kursdale, and try to find out these people. If I fail, you must help me to find them. If I succeed, I’ll come here to-morrow morning and tell you the result.” The young man wrote the address of the people in St. John’s Wood in his pocket-book, shook hands with his legal adviser, and hurried away; he was so eager to atone for the neglect of the past by the activity of the present. He hailed a hansom in Holborn, and was on his way to St. John’s Wood five minutes after he had left the lawyer’s office. He sat with his watch open in his hand, while he made abstruse calculations as to the time it would take him to find the females, Mary and Jemima Banks, extort from them all the information they had to give, drive back to his hotel, reorganize his toilet, and then make his way to Twickenham. Mr. Tredethlyn had grown something of a dandy of late; he employed a West-end tailor, belaboured his honest head with big ivory-backed brushes, and bedewed his cambric handkerchief with the odorous invention of that necromancer of the flower-garden, Monsieur Eugene Rimmel. The big Cornishman smiled at his reflection in the glass sometimes, wondering at his own frivolity. But it was for Maude Hillary’s sake that he brushed his hair laboriously every day, and grew critical in the choice of a waistcoat. He had even hired a man to wait upon him, and had a little regiment of boot-trees in his dressing-room.