“I Will Join You Heart and Hand.”

Later in the day, while Sir William was engaged with the Stewart looking over accounts and inquiring into the condition of Heathdale generally, Lady Linton went quietly up to her brother’s rooms to attend to the unpacking of his trunks and putting his wardrobe in order.

While thus engaged she came across a worn portfolio filled with papers of various kinds.

She knew at once that it was nothing that belonged to her brother, and surmised that its contents might contain much of interest regarding the despised girl whom he had married in the far West of America.

The key was attached by a ribbon to the portfolio, and was tucked into a fold of the leather, and no sense of either delicacy or honor prevented her making use of her opportunity for gratifying her curiosity regarding the young wife, without the necessity of asking questions.

Accordingly, she boldly and unhesitatingly unlocked the portfolio, and began examining its contents.

These proved to be mostly business papers and legal documents, with some letters directed to a name that she had never heard before.  She would have liked to read them, but she feared being interrupted while doing so, and she of course had no wish to have her brother know she was prying thus into his affairs so she laid them back in their place, resolving at some future time to examine them more thoroughly.  But there was one envelope among them of much fresher appearance than the others, and with no address upon it, although it contained a document of some kind.

Lady Linton slipped it out, and, unfolding it, found it to be the marriage certificate of her brother and his wife.

She was astonished to find that the ceremony had occurred in some place in Nevada, remote from any city or town—­a little settlement of which she had never heard—­and as she read further, her eyes grew wide with astonishment and her face dark with anger.

“He wrote us that her name was Virginia Abbot,” she cried, indignantly, a crimson flush mounting to her brow, “and here it is given as Virginia—­”

A step sounded outside the door in the hall just then, and her ladyship paused, affrighted, to listen, that last name unspoken on her lips.

But it proved to be only a servant passing on some duty, and she went on with her investigations.

“There is some inexplicable mystery about this thing,” she murmured.  “The name is the same as that on those letters, and I am sure he has deceived us shamefully.  He said that she was the daughter of a once wealthy Californian, but it seems that they were not in California at all.  There must have been some reason for their burying themselves in that isolated place, and—­I will yet find out what it was!”

She returned the certificate to the envelope, and put back the papers in their proper places.

All at once her face lighted.