The will was simple enough, yet at a certain name in it only an iron self-control kept Marcus Wray from a sharp exclamation. So they had left London! And tried to shake him off. What a piece of luck it was this man’s being taken ill in Paris! Without it, Helen Trelane might have escaped him, and feathered her nest alone. Now---- “I beg your pardon, I did not catch that last.” Mr. Wray looked up with an unmoved face, though the beating of his own heart was loud in his ears. Here was he, Marcus Wray, writing at the bidding of an utter stranger words which would bring him the desire of his heart--aye, and gold to gild it! He looked furtively at the pale, handsome man who seemed dying before his eyes. Was this Helen’s last victim? Or could it be possible that he was only a simple fool who believed in her? It must be, since he was giving over his only daughter and heiress to her guardianship till she was twenty-one. Well, even he had gone near to believing in her once! It was funny, though, that this last game she had been at such pains to hide from him should have been played straight into his hands like this. He held his pen in air, looking at Sir Gaspard. “There is one thing, sir--if your daughter dies unmarried, or before the age of twenty-one----” he left the sentence unfinished. “Unlikely, the girl is young, strong.” His hearer had winced. “But if it were to happen, the place,” obstinately, “must go to a Le Marchant, and Mrs. Trelane is the only one. It and the money can go to her, if my daughter--but she won’t, she won’t!” “As you say, it is most unlikely.” Wray wrote hard as he spoke. The man seemed very weak and ill; better to get everything signed and sealed as fast as possible. He rang the bell sharply for Parker, and sent him for the proprietor and a well-known London clergyman who happened to be staying in the house. They would be unimpeachable witnesses to the will; there must be nothing doubtful about it. But Marcus Wray’s strong fingers were tapping his knee with that curious hammering motion, while the two men wrote their names. “What luck!” he thought, his eyes averted lest the gleam in them might show. “All that money--for Helen--when this man dies. And he might die to-morrow.” To Cristiane, the daughter, he never gave a thought. With a will like that, and Helen Trelane knowing of it, she was not likely to come of age to marry. And the money would be his, Marcus Wray’s, as the diamonds had been, as anything belonging to Helen Trelane would be, at his nod. No more slaving, no more risky transactions. The man rose abruptly and went over to the window. He dared not think the thoughts that rang like bells in his brain. Yet his face was absolutely quiet and gentle as he turned to see the two witnesses to the will leaving the room, while Sir Gaspard, very white and still, leaned back in his chair.