Mrs. Richards looked blankly from one to another of the occupants of that room, as if she could not, even yet, comprehend the magnitude of the calamity which had so unexpectedly overtaken her. “I do not believe one word of it. It is all a piece of fraud to cheat me out of my rights,” she cried at length, while her own blazing eyes threatened to annihilate the beautiful girl, her successful rival, who sat opposite with downcast eyes, and feeling really sorry, in spite of all that she had suffered at Mrs. Richards’ hands, for her distress over this terrible defeat. “Do not allow yourself to become unreasonable over the matter, madam, I pray. There has not been, I assure you, even the suspicion of a fraud,” Mr. Compton said, his own eyes beginning to take fire at this assertion. “The papers are all there on my table; everything has been written out in the plainest manner, and copies made of all the records which go to prove what I have told you. You can examine them, if you choose; but there cannot be the slightest doubt regarding Miss Gladstone’s claim. She alone inherits everything belonging to the late Sir Charles Thornton.” “Oh, she has been the bane of our lives; she has ruined and upset every plan that we have made since the day when she first set foot in our house—since she came to us like the beggar that she was,” sobbed the wretched woman, giving way utterly to her misery. “Ah! then _you_ are the woman to whom Albert Thornton confided his orphan daughter when he knew that he could not live?” said Mr. Compton, quickly, his keen mind at once grasping certain facts which Star, from a feeling of delicacy, had withheld from him, when, to her surprise, she learned that Mrs. Richards had also come to England to claim the Thornton estates. “That has nothing to do with the case. She has _ruined_ us, and that is enough to think about for one day, I should imagine,” she retorted, angrily, and flushing.