They, however, were never parted until, twenty years later, his death left Maisie a widow, as she believed. It would have been well for her had it been so, for he died after making that very common testamentary mistake--a too ingenious will. It left to "my third son Ralph Thornton Daverill," on coming of age, all his property after "my wife Maisie, _nee_ Runciman," had received the share she was "legally entitled to." But she was unable to produce proof of her marriage when called on to do so, and was, of course, legally entitled to nothing. Thornton had been so well off that "widow's thirds" would have placed her in comfortable circumstances. As it was, the whole of his property went to her only surviving son, a youth who had inherited, with some of his father's good looks, all his bad principles; and in addition a taint--we may suppose--of the penal atmosphere in which he was born. But there was not a shadow of doubt about his being the person named in the will. Perhaps, if it had been worded "my lawful son," Themis would have jibbed. The young man, on coming of age, acquired control of the whole of his father's property, and soon started on a career of extravagance and debauchery. His mother, however, retained some influence over him, and persuaded him, a year later, before he had had time to dissipate the whole of his inheritance, to return with her to England, hoping that the moral effect of a change from the gaol-bird atmosphere of felony that hung over the whole land of his birth would develop whatever germ of honour or right feeling he possessed. She was not very sanguine, for his boyhood had been a cruel affliction to her. And the results showed that whatever hopes she had entertained were ill-founded. Arrived in London, with money still at command, he plunged at once into all the dissipations of the town, and it became evident that in the course of a year or so he would run through the remainder of his patrimony.