Little now remains to be told of this tale of crime and retribution, of suffering and compensation. Miss Brewer told her dreadful story, as far as she knew it, with perfect truth; and her evidence, together with the evidence of the chemist who had supplied Madame Durski from time to time with the fatal consoler of all her pains and sorrows, made it clear that the luckless woman, lying quietly in the darkened room at Hilton House, had died from an over-dose of opium.

Douglas Dale could not attend that inquest. He was stricken down with fever; the fate of the woman he had so loved, so unjustly suspected, nearly cost him his life, and when he recovered sufficiently, he left England, not to return for three years. Before his departure he saw Lady Eversleigh and her mother, and established with them a bond of friendship as close as that of their kin. He provided liberally for Miss Brewer, but her rescue from poverty brought her no happiness: she was a broken-hearted woman.

Victor Carrington’s mother retired into a convent, and was probably as happy as she had ever been. She had loved him but little, whose only virtue was that he had loved her much.

Captain Copplestone’s rapture knew no bounds when he clasped little Gertrude in his arms once more. He was almost jealous of Rosamond Jernam, when he found how great a hold she had obtained on the heart of her charge; but his jealousy was mingled with gratitude, and he joined Lady Eversleigh in testifying his friendship for the tender-hearted woman who had protected and cherished the heiress of Raynham in the hour of her desolation.

It is not to be supposed that the world remained long in ignorance of this romantic episode in the common-place story of every-day life.

Paragraphs found their way into the newspapers, no one knew how, and society marvelled at the good fortune of Sir Oswald’s widow.

“That woman’s wealth must be boundless,” exclaimed aristocratic dowagers, for whom the grip of poverty’s bony fingers had been tight and cruel. “Her husband left her magnificent estates, and an enormous amount of funded property; and now a mother drops down from the skies for her benefit — a mother who is reported to be almost as rich as herself.”

Amongst those who envied Lady Eversleigh’s good fortune, there was none whose envy was so bitter as that of her husband’s disappointed nephew, Sir Reginald.

This woman had stood between him and fortune, and it would have been happiness to him to see her grovelling in the dust, a beggar and an outcast. Instead of this, he heard of her exaltation, and he hated her with an intense hatred which was almost childish in its purposeless fury.

He speedily found, however, that life was miserable without his evil counsellor. The Frenchman’s unabating confidence in ultimate success had sustained the penniless idler in the darkest day of misfortune. But now he found himself quite alone; and there was no voice to promise future triumph. He knew that the game of life had been played to the last card, and that it was lost.

His feeble character was not equal to support the burden of poverty and despair.

He dared not show his face at any of the clubs where he had once been so distinguished a member; for he knew that the voice of society was against him.

Thus hopeless, friendless, and abandoned by his kind, Sir Reginald Eversleigh had recourse to the commonest form of consolation. He fled from a country in which his name had become odious, and took up his abode in Paris, where he found a miserable lodging in one of the narrowest alleys in the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg, which was then a labyrinth of narrow streets and lanes.

Here he could afford to buy brandy, for at that date brandy was much cheaper in France than it is now. Here he could indulge his growing propensity for strong drink to the uttermost extent of his means, and could drown his sorrows, and drink destruction to his enemies, in fiery draughts of cognac.

For some years he inhabited the same dirty garret, keeping the key of his wretched chamber, going up and down the crumbling old staircase uncared for and unnoticed. Few who had known him in the past would have recognized the once elegant young man in this latter stage of his existence. Form and features, complexion and expression, were alike degraded. The garments worn by him, who had once been the boasted patron of crack West-end tailors, were now shapeless and hideous. The dandy of the clubs had become a perambulating mass of rags.

Every day when the sun shone he buttoned his greasy, threadbare overcoat across his breast, and crawled to the public garden of the Luxembourg, where he might be seen shuffling slipshod along the sunniest walk, an object of contempt and aversion in the eyes of nursery-maids and grisettes— a butt for the dare-devil students of the quarter.

Had he any consciousness of his degradation?

Yes; that was the undying vulture which preyed upon his entrails — the consuming fire that was never quenched.

During the brief interval of each day in which he was sober, Sir Reginald Eversleigh was wont to reflect upon the past. He knew himself to be the wretch and outcast he was; and, looking back at his start in life, he could but remember how different his career might have been had he so chosen.

In those hours the slow tears made furrows in his haggard cheeks — the tears of remorse, vain repentance, that came too late for earth; but............