This was indeed a glorious success and the firm of Flint and Sharp drank the Countess of Seyton’s health that evening with great enthusiasm, and gleefully “thought of the morrow.”

We found the drawing-room of Seyton House occupied by the Honorable James Kingston, his solicitors, the Messrs. Jackson, Lady Seyton, and her father and sister, to whom she had at length disclosed the source of her disquietude.  The children were leaving the apartment as we entered it, and the grief-dimmed eyes of the countess rested sadly upon her bright-eyed boy as he slowly withdrew with his sisters.  That look changed to one of wild surprise as it encountered Mr. Flint’s shining, good-humored countenance.  I was more composed and reserved than my partner, though feeling as vividly as he did the satisfaction of being able not only to dispel Lady Seyton’s anguish, but to extinguish the exultation, and trample on the hopes, of the Honorable James Kingston, a stiff, grave, middle-aged piece of hypocritical propriety, who was surveying from out the corners of his affectedly-unobservant eyes the furniture and decorations of the splendid apartment, and hugging himself with the thought that all that was his!  Business was immediately proceeded with.  Chilton was called in.  He repeated his former story verbatim, and with much fluency and confidence.  He then placed in the hands of Jackson, senior, the vouchers signed by Cunningham and Mullins.  The transient light faded from Lady Seyton’s countenance as she turned despairingly, almost accusingly, towards us.

“What answer have you to make to this gentleman’s statement, thus corroborated?” demanded Jackson, senior.

“Quite a remarkable one,” replied Mr. Flint, as he rang the bell.  “Desire the gentlemen in the library to step up,” he added to the footman who answered the summons.  In about three minutes in marched Cunningham and Mullins, followed by two police-officers.  An irrepressible exclamation of terror escaped Chilton, which was immediately echoed by Mr. Flint’s direction to the police, as he pointed towards the trembling caitiff:  “That is your man—­secure him.”

A storm of exclamations, questions, remonstrances, instantly broke forth, and it was several minutes before attention could be obtained for the statements of our two Irish witnesses and the reading of the happily-found letter.  The effect of the evidence adduced was decisive, electrical.  Lady Seyton, as its full significance flashed upon her, screamed with convulsive joy, and I thought must have fainted from excess of emotion.  The Rev. John Hayley returned audible thanks to God in a voice quivering with rapture, and Miss Hayley ran out of the apartment, and presently returned with the children, who were immediately half-smothered with their mother’s ecstatic kisses.  All was for a few minutes bewilderment, joy, rapture!  Flint persisted to his dying day, that Lady Seyton threw her arms round his neck, and kissed his bald old forehead.  This, however,