“As things are, I can make no arrangement, and offer no advice.  I can only put you confidentially in possession of my private opinion, leaving you entirely free to draw your own inferences from it, and regretting that I cannot write more confidently and more definitely than I have written here.  All that I could conscientiously say on this very difficult and delicate subject, I have said.

“Believe me, dear madam, faithfully yours,

“JOHN LOSCOMBE.

“P.S.—­I omitted one consideration in my last letter, which I may mention here, in order to show you that no point in connection with the case has escaped me.  If it had been possible to show that Mr. Vanstone was domiciled in Scotland at the time of his death, we might have asserted your interests by means of the Scotch law, which does not allow a husband the power of absolutely disinheriting his wife.  But it is impossible to assert that Mr. Vanstone was legally domiciled in Scotland.  He came there as a visitor only; he occupied a furnished house for the season; and he never expressed, either by word or deed, the slightest intention of settling permanently in the North.”

IX.

From Mrs. Noel Vanstone to Mr. Loscombe.

“DEAR SIR—­I have read your letter more than once, with the deepest interest and attention; and the oftener I read it, the more firmly I believe that there is really such a Letter as you mention in Admiral Bartram’s hands.

“It is my interest that the discovery should be made, and I at once acknowledge to you that I am determined to find the means of secretly and certainly making it.  My resolution rests on other motives than the motives which you might naturally suppose would influence me.  I only tell you this, in case you feel inclined to remonstrate.  There is good reason for what I say, when I assure you that remonstrance will be useless.

“I ask for no assistance in this matter; I will trouble nobody for advice.  You shall not be involved in any rash proceedings on my part.  Whatever danger there may be, I will risk it.  Whatever delays may happen, I will bear them patiently.  I am lonely and friendless, and surely troubled in mind, but I am strong enough to win my way through worse trials than these.  My spirits will rise again, and my time will come.  If that Secret Trust is in Admiral Bartram’s possession—­when you next see me, you shall see me with it in my own hands.  Yours gratefully,

“MAGDALEN VANSTONE.”

THE SIXTH SCENE.

ST. JOHN’S WOOD.

CHAPTER I.

IT wanted little more than a fortnight to Christmas; but the weather showed no signs yet of the frost and snow, conventionally associated with the coming season.  The atmosphere was unnaturally warm, and the old year was dying feebly in sapping rain and enervating mist.