‘Yes, yours and mine, Ella!’ There is passionate delight and triumph in his whole air. ‘A moment ago you said you had no name; now—now,’ striking the papers in his hand, ‘you have one! These are genuine, I swear they are, and they prove you to be the grand-daughter of Sir John Burke, and of—strangest of all things—the Professor.’ ‘I—how can I understand? What is it?’ asks she faintly. He explains it to her, and it is, indeed, all that he has said. The breaking up of that queer old dressing-case, that afterwards Mrs. Prior had most unwillingly to admit belonged to Ella’s mother—the lost Eleanor Burke—brought all things to a conclusion. There was the diary in it that proved the writer to be Eleanor Burke beyond all doubt, and the heiress of her dead father, Sir John; and there was the marriage certificate that proved poor Eleanor’s marriage to as big a scamp as could be found in Europe, which is saying a good deal; and there were many other letters besides, to show that the scamp, who called himself Haynes to evade the law (and his father), was the son of Professor Hennessy. That Ella had forgotten the other name her poor mother bore, ‘Haynes,’ and had let her identity be lost in the word ‘Moore,’ had, of course, much to do with the unhappy mystery that had so long surrounded her. After Sir John’s death—that left Eleanor, his eldest girl, his heir, or failing her, her children—much search had been made for Eleanor under the name of Haynes, but naturally without avail. Anyway, the whole thing had gradually sunk out of sight; Eleanor was accepted as dead, and her fortune lapsing to Mrs. Prior, she reigned in her stead. * * * * * ‘You see how it is,’ says Wyndham, who from a rather prematurely old, self-contained man has developed into an ordinary person, full of enthusiasm. ‘You are now Miss Hennessy—a hideous name, I allow. But you were,’ with a flick of humour, ‘so very anxious for a name of any sort, that perhaps you will forgive the ugliness. And you are heir to a good deal of money on both sides. Mrs. Prior will have to hand out a considerable amount of her capital, and as for me ... I feel nothing less than a defrauder. You know your grandfather, the Professor, left me the bulk of his fortune—not knowing you were so much as in the world at the time he made his will. Of course, that, too—— Are you listening, Ella?’ The fact that the girl is not listening to him has evoked this remark. Whatever ‘gray grief’ had to do with her a few minutes ago, before the breaking of her mother’s dressing-case, it has nothing to do with her now. All the splendour of youth has come back to her face, and all the happiness; yet still it is quite plain to him that her mind is not set on the money that fate has cast upon her path, or on the high chances of gaining a place in society, but on——