The wounded man never recovered consciousness. He died soon after his brother’s arrival. Minshull found an opportunity of speaking to the squire, and condoled with him on the loss of so handsome a brother, and on the sad plight of the young widow left to mourn his loss. Mr. Berkeley had appeared surprised at the mention of a widow, and asked the trooper to tell him all he knew. This was very little; he could not remember the church where the marriage had been performed, nor the name of the bride; all he was sure of was the identity of the bridegroom; he did not even remember the name Berkeley. The squire had shaken his head and frowned: a secret marriage!—there was something suspicious in that; his brother had some reason to be ashamed of his alliance: he would look into it; but for the present it was best to drop the curtain on the episode. He had then offered the trooper a situation at the Hall, which Minshull, with no settled livelihood after nearly twenty years’ military service, eagerly accepted. He received good wages, and by and by a cottage on the estate. He was well aware that the squire treated him thus generously to keep his mouth shut, and though many times he had felt the prick of conscience, he was so comfortable, and, as time went on, so much afraid of the squire, that he had never broken the tacit pact between them. Old Minshull’s story worked so powerfully upon Adèle’s imagination that she became at length ill at ease. What had become of the bride whose marriage he had witnessed? Adèle remembered how Eustace Berkeley had spoken of her in his letters to Mary de Vaudrey; she remembered, too, that he had married under a feigned name. Her uneasiness grew so intolerable that she persuaded her mother, not without difficulty, to put the facts before the same lawyer whom Mynheer Grootz had employed—Mr. Swettenham Tape of Lincoln’s Inn. He warned her that enquiry might result in the loss of her property, but she insisted on an investigation, and as it promised to be an interesting enquiry, the attorney took it up with enthusiasm.