capable in deceit, that not a whisper of those doings which would have been reckoned to his disadvantage had ever reached Mr. Manners's ear. "Is Mr. Inglefield in his room?" asked Mr. Manners of the servant who opened the door. "No, sir," was the reply. Mr. Manners passed up to his own, in which the gas was lighted, and paced it slowly in deep thought, with his hands clasped behind him. The house was the same he had built during the time he was resolving upon Kingsley's future and the position he was to occupy in the world. He remembered that then he had in view a lady whom Kingsley was to wed, and through whom he was to obtain immediate entry and recognition into the highest circles of society. All the years that Mr. Manners had been abroad the magnificent house had been left in the charge of care-takers, the owner not caring to let or part with it. There was another motive. Despite the apparent irrevocableness of the break between him and Kingsley, there lurked in Mr. Manners's mind the latent hope that something--he knew not what, and had not the courage to mentally inquire--might occur which might bring them together again. He would do nothing to bring this about, but the possibility existed, and, for a while, was dimly recognized. Gradually it faded into mere nothingness and was lost sight of, but by that time Mr. Manners had become too indifferent to the making of money to turn his investment to account. He had left this house with his wife and Mark Inglefield. He returned with Mark Inglefield, having buried his wife in a foreign country. Between her and him no mention had been made of their son from the day of the renouncement. On that day he had said to his wife, "I will not allow his name to be uttered in my presence." He was her master as well as her husband, and she had grown to fear him. Whether in the depths of her heart she had preserved some touch of that most sacred of human attributes, a mother's love for her only child, was never known to Mr. Manners. She obeyed him implicitly in this as in all other matters, and even on her deathbed Kingsley's name did not pass her lips. But now, in the solitude of his room, Mr. Manners recalled those last minutes on earth of the woman he had sworn to cherish, and it came to his gentler self to place a new meaning on the wistful look in her eyes as she turned them upon him for the last time. "She was thinking of Kingsley." He did not speak the words, but they could not have been plainer to his sense had he uttered them aloud.