She laid down the letter with a blush and fell into a reverie.

Dr. Amboyne followed up this letter with a visit or two, and urged her to keep her promise and marry him.

She had no excuse for declining, but she procrastinated:  she did not like to marry without consulting Henry, or, at least, telling him by letter.

And whilst she was thus temporizing, events took place at Eastbank which ended by rudely disturbing the pious falsehood at Raby Hall.

That sequence of events began with the interview between Mr. Carden and Mr. Coventry at Woodbine Villa.

“Little had made a will.  My own solicitor drew it, and holds it at this moment.”  This was the intelligence Coventry had to communicate.

“Very well; then now I shall know who is coming to the ‘Gosshawk’ for the five thousand pounds.  That will be the next act of the comedy, you will see.”

“Wait a moment.  He leaves to Mrs. Little his own reversion to a sum of nineteen hundred pounds, in which she has already the life interest; he gives a hundred pounds to his sweetheart Dence:  all the rest of his estate, in possession or expectation, he bequeaths to—­Miss Carden.”

“Good heavens!  Why then—­” Mr. Carden could say no more, for astonishment.

“So,” said Coventry, “If he is alive, she is the confederate who is to profit by the fraud; those five thousand pounds belong to her at this moment.”

“Are you sure?  Who is your authority?”

“A communicative clerk, who happens to be the son of a tenant of mine.  The solicitor himself, I believe, chooses to doubt his client’s decease.  It is at his private request that horrible object is refused Christian burial.”

“On what grounds, pray?”

“Legal grounds, I suppose; the man did not die regularly, and according to precedent.  He omitted to provide himself with two witnesses previously to being blown up.  In a case of this kind we may safely put an old-fashioned attorney’s opinion out of the question.  What do you think?  That is all I care to know.”

“I don’t know what to think now.  But I foresee one thing:  I shall be placed in rather an awkward position.  I ought to defend the ‘Gosshawk;’ but I am not going to rob my own daughter of five thousand pounds, if it belongs to her honestly.”

“Will you permit me to advise you?”

“Certainly, I shall be very much obliged:  for really I don’t see my way.”

“Well, then, I think you ought to look into the matter carefully, but without prejudice.  I have made some inquiries myself:  I went down to the works, and begged the workmen, who knew Little, to examine the remains, and then come here and tell us their real opinion.”

“Oh, to my mind, it all depends on the will.  If that answers the description you give—­hum!” Next morning they breakfasted together, and during breakfast two workmen called, and, at Coventry’s request, were ushered into the room.  They came to say they knew Mr. Little well, and felt sure that was his dead hand they had seen at the Town Hall.  Coventry cross-examined them severely, but they stuck to their conviction; and this will hardly surprise the reader when I tell him the workmen in question were Cole and another, suborned by Coventry himself to go through this performance.