My head drooped on my hand. It was long since I had any tidings of the Argylls--death could hardly have created a more barren space between us. Yet, now that I heard the names of the girls mentioned, a flood of old emotions broke over me, beneath which I struggled, half-suffocated. Keen pain shot through my heart at the idea of Mary, that innocent, most sweet and lovable girl, becoming the wife of James. I felt as if it ought to be prevented, yet how could I interfere? Why should I wish to? I recalled the hour when she had flown to me--had said, "_I_ believe in you, Richard; _I_ love you!" and I knew that I had put a construction upon the tearful, passionate words of her last avowal, which was, after all, not warranted. I had feared that she did really love me, and that, in the last moment of sorrow and trouble, her feelings had betrayed themselves to her own comprehension--and I had felt a hope that it was not so. My own unanswered passion--my lonely, unmated life--had taught me sympathy; and I was not so utterly selfish as to have my personal vanity tickled with the idea that this young creature loved me, who did not love her, except truly as a sister. Yet now, when hearing that James had turned from Eleanor to her, I felt a pang of pity--a wish that she might rather have loved me than him whose cold, deceitful bosom could never be a safe shelter for a woman as affectionate as Mary. With this regret I felt a triumph that Eleanor had remained unassailable on the sublime and solitary hight of her sorrow. It was what I expected of her. I gloried in her constancy to the dead. I had loved her for this noble beauty of her nature, and should have been disappointed had the test found her wanting in any of the attributes with which my worship had invested her. She had done me a wrong too cruel for me to complain about; but I would rather, still, that she would wrong me than herself. Lastly, Mr. Burton assured me that he had tidings of the five-hundred-dollar bill which had been stolen from Mr. Argyll's desk. This was, indeed, important, and I showed by my looks how deeply I was absorbed in the particulars. That bill had come into the hands of Wells, Fargo & Co., about six months after the robbery, having been sold for specie to their agent in California, and forwarded to them along with the other sums which they were constantly receiving. At least, he had taken it for granted that it was the same bill, it being one of the two which left the city of New York the week of the robbery; the other he had traced to St. Louis, and ascertained that no possible suspicious circumstances attached to it.