He opened it. And as he did so, out of some background of old associations, there rushed upon him such an intolerable loathing for his own action that for a few moments his eyes refused to see its contents. The false pleading with which he had covered it was no longer to be called up, could never any more be called up. It was with a sense of desperate degradation that he forced himself to master the writing, pathetic in its feebleness, confused and indistinct. "I think it is all coming to an end at last," it said, with a forlornness which might have touched him at another time, "and that my successor will soon be free of my shoes, such as they are. I don't talk about repenting, but somehow my girl's face comes before me night and day,--I might have been more patient with her, though I did no more than I told her to look for. Your father seems a just man; people call me a hard old fellow, but I have still a feeble belief in human nature, and I believe in him. If you choose you may place a decision in his hands, and if he tells me the thing should be done, I will make an alteration in my will, half the money shall go as it is now settled, and half to Ellen Harford, Margaret's child. But should he think the change unnecessary, I do not wish to be pestered by replies or arguments. Silence will answer me fully. I shall understand that he thinks my proposal unadvisable, and I shall never break it by an allusion." And this was the letter which Marmaduke must deliver. For a quarter of an hour he stood motionless with it in his hand. Over his head was the sweet changeable April sky, and on either side of the road a little green copse in which the birds were chirping and twittering. He looked up at last, with a fierce gesture of impatience at their glad piping, at the tender sunshine; a sudden storm, a wild rending of all these pretty gentle things, would have been more congenial to him just then than the burden of their joy. Two men jogged by him in a cart, and looked at him curiously as he stood by the roadside. It raised a quick fear that they might discover his secret, and he began to walk slowly on again, reading and rereading the letter in obedience to some mechanical impulse, for the first sight had burned the words into his brain. It was remarkable that he had no longer any fear of Anthony as a rival, probably from his own frame of mind being such that it was impossible for him to realise a sane man putting such a choice into the hands of his heir, and conceiving the idea of his exercising it in any way but one. It was only a robbery of himself which was revealed to him; an iniquitous deprival of half of his inheritance. For he needed no assurance of what Mr Miles's decision would be. He had a half-uncomfortable, half-slighting contempt for the Vicar's notions, which he classed with other antiquated forms of thought belonging to the old world. Anthony's words came back to him with a