"The old monk declared there was only a small sum in gold. I know there must have been a good lot, if the lad did not lead a terribly riotous life as he came, and of that I heard nothing." There were many who wept for poor Henry Hayley; but there was one who felt that he had more cause to weep than all, though he could not shed a tear. Mr. Hayley fell into profound melancholy, from which nothing could rouse him. His affairs righted themselves, in a very great degree, without his making an effort; several of the speculations in which he had engaged proved eminently successful, but they brought no comfort. He walked about his house and the town like a ghost, never speaking to any one but those who spoke to him; and it was observed that he often talked to himself, but no one heard anything escape his lips save the one solitary word, "murder," murmured in the accents of horror and despair. CHAPTER IV. This shall be an exceedingly short chapter, merely destined to wind up that preliminary matter with which it was absolutely necessary for the reader to be made acquainted before perusing the real business of the tale. Another long lapse of nearly ten years must intervene before we take up any of the characters afresh; and the reader will soon see now the preceding events connect themselves with those that follow. The characters, indeed, were sadly diminished in number between the time at which the story opens and that to which I have now to proceed. Of the four children of the elder Mr. Scriven, only two survived--Lady Fleetwood and Mr. Scriven. Lady Monkton survived her husband just ten years, and then died very suddenly, leaving her daughter Maria the heiress of great wealth at the age of about twenty. She was, indeed, a few months more when her mother was taken from her, and Mr. Scriven's guardianship had not long to run--a fact with which that gentleman was not well pleased; for, besides the authority which the guardianship conferred--and all men like authority--the whole of the fortune which his sister Isabella had received, and the accumulated surplus of the rents of Sir Edward Monkton's estates, making together a very large sum, remained in his hands, and he found them exceedingly convenient; nay, more--somewhat lucrative. He clearly accounted for the interest upon every penny at a moderate rate; but he did not think it at all necessary to state to Maria, or to calculate in any way, except for his own private satisfaction--and I do not know that he even did that--all that he gained by turning and returning the funds of hers at his disposal. That went under the general head of "profits of business."