But the improvement in Francis Eversleigh's bodily and mental health was only, could be only temporary. Already drifting like a rudderless ship, he might any moment founder on the rocks. Deeply involved in a course of equivocation and deceit, to which there could be but one end, unless some miracle occurred, the necessity of continuing in it, added to the other circumstances of his situation, soon changed the transient brightness of his spirits into the gloom of that settled and terrible melancholy which had descended upon him before. In vain he strove to fight against it, to overcome it; his efforts were utterly useless. The most serious things he had to consider were the Thornton Estate and the Silwood Estate. With regard to the latter, he well knew there was no such thing as a Silwood Estate at all, but he deemed it essential for the sake of keeping up appearances to make a pretence that there was such an estate--at least, until it became evident there was none. Here the "law's delays," of which he took full advantage, assisted him; but then there was Williamson endlessly curious and prying. Some of the questions he put to his principal were hard to answer, and drove Eversleigh to the verge of madness. Silwood's room in the office, the japanned box--always excepting the secret cavity of which no one knew--the whole office, and finally Silwood's chambers in Stone Buildings, now free from the embargo of the law, had been carefully searched for the will of the dead solicitor; but no will had been found. Williamson openly said that the absence of a will in the case of a man who must have been rich, and who was a lawyer to boot, was a most singular thing. Undoubtedly it was this that suggested to the head-clerk something of the actual fact, namely, that there was a screw loose with respect to the financial position of the firm. But, as before, he had nothing definite to go on, and he never dreamed that the affairs of the house were in the desperate condition they really were. But it was the Thornton Estate which troubled Eversleigh most of all. Gilbert, as the affianced husband of Kitty, spoke to his father soon after the inquest about Morris Thornton's property, and asked him if Thornton's will was deposited in the office, or if the agents in Canada had it. Francis knew there was a will in the office, and was tolerably sure no other was in existence, but Gilbert's query gave him a chance of standing him off on the whole subject for a considerable time. He snatched at it eagerly.