The seal was broken.  The stiff writing-paper of the outer cover revealed a second cover of stiff writing-paper precisely similar to the first; but on this last there was no superscription.  It was tied round with fine white twine.  Lionel cut it, Tynn and Mrs. Tynn waited with the utmost eagerness; even Mrs. Verner’s eyes were open wider than usual.

Alas! for the hopes of Lionel.  The parcel contained nothing but a glove, and a small piece of writing-paper, folded once.  Lionel unfolded it, and read the following lines:—­

“This glove has come into my possession.  When I tell you that I know where it was found and how you lost it, you will not wonder at the shock the discovery has been to me.  I hush it up, Lionel, for your late father’s sake, as much as for that of the name of Verner.  I am about to seal it up that it may be given to you after my death; and you will then know why I disinherit you.  S.V.”

Lionel gazed on the lines like one in a dream.  They were in the handwriting of his uncle.  Understand them, he could not.  He took up the glove—­a thick, fawn-coloured riding-glove—­and remembered it for one of his own.  When he had lost it, or where he had lost it, he knew no more than did the table he was standing by.  He had worn dozens of these gloves in the years gone by, up to the period when he had gone in mourning for John Massingbird, and, subsequently, for his uncle.

“What is it, Lionel?”

Lionel put the lines in his pocket, and pushed the glove toward Mrs. Verner.  “I do not understand it in the least,” he said.  “My uncle appears to have found the glove somewhere, and he writes to say that he returns it to me.  The chief matter that concerns us is”—­turning his eyes on the servants—­“that it is not the codicil!”

Mrs. Tynn lifted her hands.  “How one may be deceived!” she uttered.  “Mr. Lionel, I’d freely have laid my life upon it.”

“It was not exactly my place to speak, sir:  to give my opinion beforehand,” interposed Tynn; “but I was sure that was not the lost codicil, by the very look of it.  The codicil might have been about that size, and it had a big seal like that; but it was different in appearance.”

“All that puzzled me was, how it could have got into the shirt-drawer,” cried Mrs. Tynn.  “As it has turned out not to be the codicil, of course there’s no mystery about that.  It may have been lying there weeks and weeks before the master died.”

Lionel signed to them to leave the room:  there was nothing to call for their remaining in it.  Mrs. Verner asked him what the glove meant.

“I assure you I do not know,” was his reply.  And he took it up, and examined it well again.  One of his riding gloves, scarcely worn, with a tear near the thumb; but there was nothing upon it, not so much as a trace, a spot, to afford any information.  He rolled it up mechanically in the two papers, and placed them in his pocket, lost in thought.