"Yes," said the lady.

"I thought so," rejoined Gasford, twitching at his waistcoat, as if he were preparing for an important encounter.

"Bessie, dear," said the elder lady, "I will call for you at the Abbey very shortly. I shall soon have finished my business with Mr. Gasford."

"I will walk with you, if you will allow me," said Harry, taking up his hat, and opening the door for Bessie.

"With pleasure," Miss Arnold replied; and she spoke frankly, for she enjoyed Harry's society. He told her the latest news from town, chatted about new plays and operas, and was most agreeable in his conversation generally.

The truth is Harry Gasford was not in love with Bessie; he admired her. She was clever, piquant, and pretty; and he had known her from boyhood. Therefore, he had nothing "spooney" to say to her; he did not strive to make himself attractive in her eyes; he was not afraid of her; not continually hunting up his thoughts for fine things to say to her, for compliments, love-messages, and poetic references to the tender passion. None of the fears and doubts and hopes of the lover embarrassed his talk; he rattled away about all manner of things and upon all manner of subjects, and Bessie laughed at his jokes, and wondered at his marvellous stories of London life. But this morning, on their way to the Abbey, Harry Gasford laid himself out to pay extra courtesies to Bessie, in view of that little arrangement which his father was now so anxious to con summate. Harry did not care to marry; none of the sex had excited desires matrimonial in his breast; but, if he must marry, he felt that he would sooner have Bessie than any other lady of his acquaintance.

As for Miss Arnold herself, the chances are that Harry would not have wooed in vain had she never seen Arthur Merryvale; for she liked young Gasford, and in due time might have come to believe that she loved him very much; but now that Arthur Merryvale had crossed her path Harry Gasford would woo and sue in vain for a wife in Bessie Arnold. Ever since that bright, dark, intellectual face had shone upon her beneath the fretted roof of the old Abbey, Bessie's heart had been moved by new sensations. She loved Arthur Merryvale, and she knew already that she was loved in return. Is there not some electric communication between two souls that love at first sight,some essence of the spirit that discovers its fellow on the instant? Love manifested itself in the eyes and in the voices of Bessie and Arthur; hanging out, as it were, mutual tokens of surrender. Mrs. Arnold saw the tokens, and old Gasford had noticed them. Pro

bably, had Harry Gasford been present at that eventful little dinner he would have seen nothing particularly amiable or loving in the intercourse of the stranger with Miss Arnold; but then he was not so interested in discovering Bessie's likes and dislikes as were Mrs. Arnold and his scheming father.

"I really think it is time that business connected with Mr. Bence's estate should be settled, Mr. Gasford," said Mrs. Arnold, when the green baize doors were fairly closed upon her daughter.

"Yes, yes,” said Gasford; "take a seat, take a seat, Mrs. Arnold. You see these things are tedious affairs, very tedious."

"So it would seem; but there is an end to the most tedious matters of this kind, and I do hope we have arrived at the end of this very long lane, in which you said we had arrived at the turning years ago."

"Well, we shall see," said Gasford, looking at his blotting pad, "we shall see. I will be plain with you, and prompt. There is no beating about the bush with me; no, not at all, not at all."

Mrs. Arnold felt that Gasford was going to make some important declaration, for he had used those very words fifteen years before when he had been silly enough to offer his hand and fortune to Mrs. Arnold, widow, who had treated the proposal as a joke, and so contrived her reply thereto as not to wound the lawyer, who had established such a control over her property that she could not afford to make him her enemy. With her woman's tact, she had maintained a sort of friendship with Gasford, hoping that time would unravel the intricacies of her business affairs, and relieve her from a certain amount of dependence upon Mr. Gasford's advice and management which had been brought about by the follies of her deceased husband.

"We will soon settle the business. The day when my son marries your daughter Bessie you shall have possession of the property left to you by Bence; I will execute a deed of release in the matter of your other properties, and I will settle upon Mrs. Harry Gasford forty thousand pounds. There! There! Is it a bargain ?”

"Mr. Gasford, you surprise me. I could not have thought that—" "Fifteen years ago I offered to marry you. I was an old fool to do anything of the kind, no doubt, no doubt. I took your refusal kindly; yes, took it kindly, Mrs. Arnold, but I have set my mind on this other union, set my mind on it, marm. Is there any obstacle? forbid the bans?"

Do you

Gasford fixed his restless, ferret-like eyes upon Mrs. Arnold as he asked the question, and she turned her head away in some confusior.

"Don't they like each other, eh? Eh, Mrs. Arnold, Bessie likes him better than you did me, eh? Eh, my lady?"

"Yes, she does, most certainly," said Mrs. Arnold, with a sudden fierceness that startled Gasford. "Your son is a fine, honest, honour

able young man that I do believe."
"Thank you," said Mr. Gasford, "thank you.
unlike his father, eh Mrs. Arnold ?'

I suppose he is

"Very much so indeed, sir; if he were not I should answer you that I would sooner see Bessie in her coffin than married to him."

Mrs. Arnold had lost, in a moment, all that calm control of her feelings which had hitherto aided her in her few interviews with the lawyer. The intense love which she had for her daughter took alarm at Gasford's words, and his reference to the past ignited the latent spark of resentment: an explosion of passion and scorn was the result.

"Like you!" she exclaimed, confronting Gasford; "like you! That were impossible. God has more mercy than to allow the devil to create more than one Gasford."

"Indeed! You are complimentary, very complimentary," said Gasford, as though he were a fiend rejoicing in his clever devilry. "You make me laugh, you make me laugh, Mrs. Arnold," he went on, chuckling and rubbing his hands and looking at her with an air of Satanic triumph.

Mrs. Arnold could not bear this; she felt as if her brain were on fire so she hurried out of the room, and out into the street, whilst Gasford still stood by his desk rubbing his hands and chuckling, until his face gradually assumed its ordinary cunning, and some other poor victim came to be tortured on the wheel of fortune upon which Gasford himself will be broken at last.

SCENE II.-GRAY'S INN.

GRAY'S INN SQUARE! What a variety of emotions have been experienced here. How many anxious eyes have scanned the hard walls and the dingy windows? Heirs expectant, and heirs in fact, how they have glanced along the names painted in black and white. at the commencement of long passages, and then vaulted lightly up long flights of stairs to be ushered, all smiles and graciousness, into the rooms of principals. Clients who have lost serious actions at law, and men on the verge of bankruptcy, how their hearts have sunk with abandonment of hope as they have entered the grim portals of this grim locality: to them the smug signboards have been coffin plates, the dim regions beyond mausoleums of their dearest hopes.

Nicodemus Gasford entered the square a few days after the interview described in the previous chapter, influenced by feelings and motives which may be gathered in a great measure from his conduct. He sneaked into the square as if he were on the look-out for some person who was attempting to elude his vigilance. Peering from beneath his shaggy eyebrows up into the windows, which seemed to look back with a mysterious self-complacent air, Mr. Gasford mumbled defiant observations to himself and sidled past the offices of Messrs. Hillyar Betten and Foxwell as if he had not the slightest intention of calling there.

"Ha! Wonder if that young cub will be in the office," he muttered, as he worked his way to the further end of the square.

"We shall see, we shall see; so you would double upon Gasford, eh?—upon the old firm of Gasford and Bence, eh? Marry Bessie Florence, when Gasford has made up his mind she shall marry his own son, eh? And your dear mamma is still living, eh, Mr. Merryvale, and you may perhaps turn out to be Bence's son, eh, my fine friend, and claim your rights and claim your rights, and ask for restitution ?"

Mr. Gasford found that, by the time he had reached the archway opposite to that by which he had entered, he had not quite made up his mind what the nature of his interview with the London agents of the old firm should be.

"An awkward business. I'll worm it out, though," he said to himself. If any thing is in the wind to favour Bence's daughter they'll stick to her and not to me, because there is more to be made on that tack than by an alliance with foxy old Gasford. Why do I suspect anything of this kind arising? Eh? Why do I? Because I am always on the look-out; and that Merryvale was sent down to Westfield for a purpose. If he is not old Bence's son my name ain't Gasford. If he is the youngster she carried off, Hillyar knows it, and he would not put him in my path for nothing. in town too, and his father-his father! - is dead. Miss Bessie before? Of course he had, must have as familiar with her as if he had known her for years. I see it all; I see the whole business, but it will not do Master Hillyar, it will not do, sir."

His mother is

Had he met done, he was

Old Gasford did not see it all, nevertheless: what he attributed to design was accidental circumstance, unless some guiding all-powerful hand had moved the human puppets that play their part in this drama, and had deposited Arthur Merryvale in Westfield Abbey by special design on that eventful day when Bessie Arnold was practising, at the organ.

"Well, I'll go into the office," said Gasford, at length; and he went accordingly, groping his way up Hillyar Betten and Foxwell's staircase, and finally presenting himself in the outer apartment, a sort of legal sentry box to a small army of clerks beyond, who formed a bodyguard to the private rooms of the several principals of the house.

"He's engaged, sir," said the clerk, who was nibbing a pen, and eating hard biscuits in the intervals of this occupation.

"Oh," said Mr. Gasford, seating himself out of sight of the clerks in the adjacent room; "will he be long?"

"Can't say," said the clerk.

"Humph!" grunted Gasford, putting his hand into his pocket and fidgeting with half-a-sovereign in one corner thereof. "Let me see. Surely it is the same! of course. Two years ago you did a little

service for me."

"Not that I know of," said the clerk.

"O yes, you did," said Gasford. "I remember distinctly, and I forgot to make you any acknowledgment.”

"It was not I," said the clerk, laying down his pen and his biscuits

too.

"You are too modest," said Gasford. -say no more about it."

"There is half-a-sovereign

"Well, sir, perhaps your memory is better than mine," said the man, pocketing the money, and evidently preparing to be cautiously communicative.

"Anything been doing lately in Bence's affairs? My name is Gasford," said the Westfield lawyer.

"Oh, indeed, sir; you are Mr. Gasford, sir. Shall I tell Mr. Hillyar? Mr. Betten is disengaged."

"No, no, I can wait," said Gasford. "Has anything been going on relative to Bence's affairs that you know of?”

"Well, I can't exactly say, sir," said the clerk; "I fancy not."

"You fancy not! Ah! No copies of deeds made lately-eh? Then I suppose the business which I have come up about has been neglected?"

"I don't think anything is ever neglected here," said the man. “Mr. Hillyar, now I come to think, has had the papers re-sorted and scheduled lately."

The clerk's interest in his employer had elicited what Gasford's golden tip could not discover.

"That's right," said Gasford; "then my visit will not be in vain. You are quite right, things are not neglected here."