Well! He had listened--he had disgraced himself--he was humbled in his own eyes, and would be lost in Clare’s, should she ever find it out. And what had he made by it? He had discovered that Edgar had discovered something, which Clare would fain have destroyed--something which evidently affected them both deeply, and to which they gave a probably exaggerated importance. That was all. Whether it was anything that could affect himself he had not found out--not a word had been said to throw any light upon the mystery. The two knew what it was themselves, and they did not stop in their conversation to give any description of it for the benefit of the listener. Such things are done only by people on the stage. The eavesdropper in this case was none the wiser. He was much excited by the allusions he had heard. His faculties were all wound up to observe and note everything. But his knowledge of the world made him incredulous. After the first thrill of excitement--after the intense apprehension and shame with which he watched them disappear into the night, when he began seriously to think the matter over, he did not find in it, it must be said, any encouragement to his hopes. Arthur Arden knew the definite suspicion which all the circumstances of Edgar’s life had raised in many minds, and at a very recent time he had seriously nourished a hope of himself finding among the Squire’s papers something which should brand the Squire’s heir with illegitimacy, and prove that he was no Arden at all, though the offspring of Squire Arden’s wife. Only the other day he had entertained this thought. But now, when it would seem that some such papers had been found, the futility of it struck him as nothing had ever done before. A posthumous accusation would have no effect, he saw, upon the law. Squire Arden had never disowned Edgar. He had given him his name, and acknowledged him as his son, and no stigma that he could put upon him, now he was dead, could counteract that acknowledgment. He smiled bitterly to think that he himself could have been so very credulous as to believe it would; and he smiled still more bitterly at the perturbation of these two young people, and how soon Mr. Fazakerly would set their fears at rest. As soon as they had disappeared, he stepped boldly into the library by the open window, and examined the place to see if perchance any relics were left about, of which he could judge for himself; but there was nothing left about. And he had nothing for it but to leave the library, and retire to the drawing-room, of which for most of the evening he had been the solitary inmate. Some time after the sound of windows closing, of steps softly ascending the stairs, made it apparent that Edgar and Clare had come in, and finally separated for the night; though nobody appeared to disturb his solitude, except Wilkins, who came in and yawned, and pretended to look if the lamps wanted trimming. But even when he retired