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306 very bad, nearly gone, myself more than once. And that reminds me. Would yon not like to see your niece? Shall I wire, to tell her so?"

"Nay," he said, almost in a whisper. "She wouldn't like to come here. I understand it all now. You'll tell her so—eh, Twisden? You'll tell her that I understood? She is a good lass; I always thought she was a good lass—and—and I'll give a good report of her to her father."

The two old men shook hands. Both knew that it was their last meeting on earth. But the one whose time was not yet come could not regret that the honest, simple-minded man who lay upon his death-bed should be taken from the treachery and deceit by which he had been surrounded for so long, and to which his eyes had now at last been opened.

The parrot talked shrilly to the lawyer while he ate his solitary meal, but his mistress had the grace not to intrude herself upon him. She could do no good now. Whatever had taken place in the bedroom upstairs was past recall. Mr. Twisden would say, virtually, like Pilate, "What I have written, I have written." He saw her for an instant before stepping into the brougham, when she looked wistfully into his face, and made as though she would say something. But the words died on her lips, incapable of utterance before the grave, unpitying politeness of the old lawyer.

Elizabeth received the news of her uncle's death by telegram the very morning of Melchior's last interview with Alaric Baring. She was genuinely grieved to think