him, with a momentary sensation of relief, as though she had escaped from a wild beast; and, coming back again, relapsed into an anxious study once more of Edmund's little pale sharp face. Edmund's will, magnificent and powerless, his last toy and plaything, lay on the table beside him. Was Edmund to live or to die? CHAPTER XVIII. A few days after this scene Roger Musgrave and Sir John Armitage arrived at Harliflax. Edmund was still living, and not less life-like than he had been for years, though his will was by this time signed and sealed. This will had been a ready means of renewing the flirtation, which was all the beautiful Amelia owned to maintaining with her father's clerk. Amelia was sadly tired of her mourning, and its inevitable decorums; she was glad to throw herself in Horace's way when he came to finish that child's will, which he did next morning, for Amelia's sake. Amelia wanted to ask him about this will; papa had been very unjust to the rest for Edmund's sake, and now somebody told her that the little wretch (though she was sure she had cried her eyes out about him, and hoped with all her heart he would get better) was making a will, leaving everything to mamma's son by her first marriage, whom none of them had ever seen. Was it true?--_could_ a little spoiled monkey like that, only eleven years old, make a will?--had anybody any right to give papa's property away from his children? Mr. Scarsdale knew it was not of herself she was thinking, but poor Eliza and Fanny--what was to become of them if _some one_ did not think of their interests?--for mamma cared for nothing in the world but little Edmund and her other son. All this flood of question and statement poured upon Horace, who incautiously set the beautiful doubter's mind at rest by telling her that Edmund's will was as useless as any other toy of Edmund's, if the child died. Horace proceeded immediately to enlarge upon his own prospects, and the income he had already secured, but Amelia's heart was shut against him. She was not more cruel or cold-blooded than a great many other people; she did not wish Edmund's death; but that being a thing which everybody calculated upon as "rather to be desired than otherwise for his own sake, poor child," Amelia's spirits rose a little with the idea of finding herself an heiress, and once more regaining command of the house. That sickly child made a vast difference in various matters to Amelia; without Edmund she could easily subdue her mother; with Edmund, she was only Mr. Stenhouse's eldest daughter, with two or three thousand pounds; but without him she was the mistress of a very pretty fortune. Perhaps it was not much wonder if the thoughts of the ambitious and uneducated young beauty availed themselves of this prospect without too much delicacy, and thrust Edmund out of the way. However, Horace found it very difficult to arrest her attention to the expression of his own wishes and arrangements.