"I often wonder," she said calmly, "when I see you in the evenings, how you manage to shake off all your anxieties so easily, for I suppose," she continued, "that success, like everything else, carries always its anxieties." "Sometimes more than failure," he answered. "Well," she continued, "it doesn't seem possible to associate the word 'failure' with you. Some day you must tell me the whole story of your life. I can scarcely believe that there has ever been a time when you haven't succeeded in anything you undertook." He laughed grimly. "You should have been with me in Africa," he said, "after the fighting was over. We expected to go about picking up gold almost on the streets." "You were too sanguine," she laughed. "It was hard enough work to live," he answered. "I tried many things,--failures, all of them!" "Until the Little Anna Gold-Mine," she remarked. "Until the Little Anna Gold-Mine," he assented, "and that, at first, seemed hopeless enough. The mine had been deserted twice. The natives there had a name for it which means the Grave of Dead Hopes!" They turned into the avenue, and the house was at once visible, standing on the edge of a lake, large and a little bare. The lawns and gardens were brilliant with color, and the hills on the other side of the water were purple with heather. "Well, here is all the rest you want," she said. "We haven't a neighbor within six miles, and a most harmless lot of guests." He drew a long sigh of content. The tragedy, indeed, of the last few weeks seemed to lie far behind in some other world! CHAPTER XXI RUBY IS DISAPPOINTED The solicitor hung up his silk hat, motioned his two visitors to seats, and took his accustomed place in front of his writing-table. "I am afraid," he said, turning toward Mr. Sarsby, but in reality addressing his niece, "that your visit to town has been, in some respects, a disappointment to you, especially," he continued, "bearing in mind the letter which you, my dear young lady, have just shown me. Still, there is no getting away from facts. We have carefully examined every paper and every portion of the personal belongings of the deceased, and I am afraid we must come to the decision that there is nothing in those effects worth taking away." "It certainly seems not," Mr. Sarsby assented. "I must say that from the first I have discouraged my niece in her expectations. I never knew Sinclair, but everyone spoke of him as being a shiftless and impossible sort of person." The lawyer nodded. "From the state of his effects," he remarked, "that seems very possible, and yet one cannot help wondering what it was that he had in his mind when he wrote to your niece,--what it was, too, that induced him to take rooms in a hotel like the Universal."