director.  Finding his illness becoming serious, the major had anticipated the time and mode in which the young people had determined to break the intelligence to the irascible father of the bridegroom, and the result was the furious and angry letter in reply which I was perusing.  Mr. Thorneycroft would never, he declared, recognize the marriage of his undutiful nephew—­nephew, not son; for he was, the letter announced, the child of an only sister, whose marriage had also mortally offended Mr. Thorneycroft, and had been brought up from infancy as his (Mr. Thorneycroft’s) son, in order that the hated name of Allerton, to which the boy was alone legally entitled, might never offend his ear.  There was something added insinuative of a doubt of the legality of the marriage, in consequence of the misnomer of the bridegroom at the ceremony.

“One question,” muttered the major, as I finished the perusal of the letter—­“Is Rosamond’s marriage legal?”

“No question about it.  How could any one suppose that an involuntary misdescription can affect such a contract?”

“Enough—­enough!” he gasped.  “A great load is gone!—­the rest is with God.  Beloved Rosamond”—­The slight whisper was no longer audible; sighs, momently becoming fainter and weaker, followed—­ceased, and in little more than ten minutes after the last word was spoken, life was extinct.  I rang the bell, and turned to leave the room, and as I did so surprised Martin on the other side of the bed.  He had been listening, screened by the thick damask curtains, and appeared to be a good deal sobered.  I made no remark, and proceeded on down stairs.  The man followed, and as soon as we had gained the hall said quickly, yet hesitatingly, “Sir—­sir!”

“Well, what have you to say?”

“Nothing very particular, sir.  But did I understand you to say just now, that it was of no consequence if a man married in a false name?”

“That depends upon circumstances.  Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing—­nothing; only I have heard it’s transportation, especially if there’s money.”

“Perhaps you are right.  Anything else?”

“No,” said he, opening the door; “that’s all—­mere curiosity.”

I heard nothing more of the family for some time, except with reference to Major Stewart’s personal property, about L4000 bequeathed to his daughter, with a charge thereon of an annuity of L20 a year for Mrs. Leslie, the aged house-keeper; the necessary business connected with which we transacted.  But about a twelvemonth after the major’s death, the marriage of the elder Thorneycroft with a widow of the same name as himself, and a cousin, the paper stated, was announced; and pretty nearly a year and a half subsequent to the appearance of this ominous paragraph, the decease of Mr. Henry Thorneycroft at Lausanne, in Switzerland, who had left, it was added in the newspaper stock-phrase of journalism, a young widow and two sons to mourn their irreparable loss.