Treherne laughed, and the Colonel went on with his prelection. “Never stop to consider what people will think, Hugh. They will think what they damn please. It is the root of most of the troubles that beset this world,--trying to square our preferences and duty to what people will think.” Thus the testimony _de bene esse_ was taken, Captain Treherne’s story from the beginning;--his part in the concealment of the treasure at Duciehurst, assisting his friend and comrade Archibald Ducie; his knowledge of the nature of the papers among the jewels; the early death of his friend; his own wound and his consequent mental disability; his incarceration for forty years in an insane asylum; his recent recovery of memory, and his resolve to right this wrong which impelled him to make his escape from Glenrose; his meeting with Colonel Kenwynton; the strange attack he sustained from unknown miscreants after quitting the sand-bar; the transit, bound and gagged, to Duciehurst, supplemented by the circumstances of his liberation by Colonel Kenwynton and Adrian Ducie. The affidavit of the alienist as to his lucid condition at the time and his present mental reliability completed the proceedings. This was merely a precautionary measure, designed to guard against a relapse of Captain Treherne into his malady. The Ducie heirs had already made formal demand for the restoration of their ancestral estate, alleging the full satisfaction of the indebtedness, recording the release of the mortgage and the quit-claim deed, and bringing suit against all in interest. CHAPTER XVI Floyd-Rosney could scarcely restrain his fury when the papers were served upon him. The whole subject had grown doubly distasteful because of its singular connection with his domestic concerns. He could not fall to so poor spirited a plane as to imagine that his wife preferred another man--he was too ascendant in his own estimation to harbor the thought. Logic, simple, plain common sense, forbade the conclusion. She had thrown this man over for him years ago at the first summons. He did not esteem his wealth as the lure; it was only an incident of his other superlative advantages. She had not seen the discarded lover since, yet from the moment of the appearance of the facsimile brother was inaugurated a change in her manner, her conversation, the very look in her eyes, which he could not explain, except as the result of old associations which he did not share, antagonistic to his interest and his domestic peace. She had very blandly explained on the first opportunity, volunteering the communication, indeed, the mystery of the return of the key--an old _gage d’amour_, a trifle--the slightness of which he mentally conceded, for he had large ideas in _bijouterie_. She did not wish to keep it, nor to send it back without explanation; in fact, she was not willing to return it at all except in her husband’s presence.