He felt what it was right to do, and he strove now to do it, however difficult, however painful his own acts might have rendered the task--however fatal to his corporeal frame might be the efforts that he made, and the anxieties he suffered. For the greater part of one whole night he remained eagerly dictating his will to the lawyer Evelyn; providing for his younger son, but endeavouring to strengthen in every way the claim of the elder to his title and estates. He made a solemn declaration of his marriage too; named the day, the spot, the clergyman who had performed it, with scrupulous accuracy, pointed to the woman Bertha as the only surviving witness, and related how the leaf on which the marriage had been inscribed had been cut from the register and how he had forced his young and unhappy wife to give up to him the certificates she had received of their union. He spared himself, in short, in nothing; and again and again he asked eagerly if that declaration and the woman Bertha's testimony would not be sufficient. The lawyer shook his head doubtingly. The marriage, he said, had been denied for so many years; the woman, too, was an alien and a Roman Catholic, against whom prejudices then ran high. The question involved an ancient peerage and immense property; and, in short, there was every reason to doubt whether the young gentleman's title could be sustained, unless the papers were recovered. If the register itself were not in existence, and the marriage had never been denied, the case might easily have been made good; but, with no trace of such an act in the existing register, and no absolute publication of the marriage, he had many doubts. "But there is a trace!" exclaimed the Earl vehemently; "there is a trace; there is the leaf cut out. Send for the register! Let it be brought here immediately!" "We can do that to-morrow, my lord," replied the lawyer. But the Earl would not be satisfied till a servant was despatched for the record on which so much depended. It was brought to him by the clerk of the parish of Uppington, during the grey daylight of the next morning, for the very vehemence of his nature had taught every one through the country round to yield instant, and now habitual deference to his wishes. On examining the book, however, he found nothing but disappointment. When by large bribes he had induced the low-minded but cunning priest, who then held the living, to cut out the leaf, he had enjoined him strictly to leave no trace whatever of the transaction; and so nicely had the removal been accomplished, that no eye could detect the place where the vacancy existed.