Then came the decision of the four to cling together at all costs; to hide themselves from the world, giving up everything but each other. Ernest Fitzmaurice had disappeared shortly after his victim's imprisonment began, carrying with him, as was revealed by his dying deposition, a comparatively trifling portion of his theft, which he had had time to realise, and on which, thanks to his skill and adroitness, was founded the large fortune he eventually made. He was never heard of again while alive by the Gwynneths. With Mr Payne's help, Grimsthorpe House was taken for the brothers and sisters under the name of "Grey," and there for twenty years they had lived their strange and isolated life, refusing even to alter its tenor when the second and much more important fortune became theirs. Why, it may be asked, did the elder brother--Justin was his name--never attempt to clear himself? I can scarcely say. Mr Payne, in lapse of time, had become convinced of his client's innocence, and had often, but vainly, prayed for full confidence. His own opinion was, I think, that Mr Gwynneth's brain had grown morbid on the point. Not improbably, too, the poor man's seeing that even this old friend and adviser had not the most shadowy suspicion of the real culprit, may have helped to seal his lips. "Poor Ernest!" Mr Payne used to say sometimes, "if _he_ were still alive, he would have been back with us to join me in urging you to tell the whole. But he must be dead--indeed, Gwynneth, I think it broke his heart." "What torture it must have been to him to listen to me," the kind-hearted man added, when he told us this. "No, Caryll was his only confidant, I feel sure." "And did you suspect no one else?" I remember asking. "Yes, a certain man-servant did not escape all suspicion of collusion," was the reply. "But he, we knew as a fact, was dead, and the mere allusion to him was enough to excite Gwynneth painfully. He swore he would never move a finger to clear himself, unless Providence itself interposed." "Which it did," said Clarence. This fragment of conversation took place some time later, when I was again a guest at Granville Square. Well, it "ended well," as far as could be so late in the day. The Gwynneths left Millflowers and went to live at their own beautiful house. And there, as they deserved, they were respected by all whom they allowed to know them, loved by the very few whom they admitted to intimacy. But the iron had entered too deeply into the souls of the three elder ones for them ever to be "like other people." Caryll and the younger sister are still living, very old but very peaceful, happy in making others so. Publicity, so far as it could serve any good purpose, was given to Ernest Fitzmaurice's statement. But the more than a quarter of a century that had passed had almost obliterated the once famous trial from the world's short memory--better so, perhaps.