"My dear Wilton," wrote Mrs. Bullivant to her half-brother a couple of days subsequently to the events recorded in the last chapter, "I have some very singular news for you which I lose no time in communicating; but whether--bearing in mind the peculiar features of the case--you will be inclined to stigmatize it as bad news or to bless it as good, seems to me somewhat problematical, and I at once confess that I am myself at a loss to know in which light to regard it.

"Although my disappointment in the matter of Mr. Cortelyon\'s will was so extreme as almost for a time to drive me beyond myself, and to stir up within me feelings and passions to which I had been a stranger aforetime, and although I took a silent oath that, come what might, I would be revenged for what I then regarded, and still regard, as the vile trick of which I was made the victim; yet am I inclined to think that had it not been for your persistent fanning of the flame which just then burnt so fiercely within me, my passion would gradually have cooled down, my reason would have again found its equipoise, and I should never have given my sanction to a certain step, the rashness and futility of which I recognized almost from the moment of agreeing to it.

"Mind, in writing this I am not imputing any blame to you; or, if there is any, we share it on equal terms. Your own disappointment was bitter enough in all conscience to goad you on to do things from which, at another time and in your calmer moments, you would have turned away as being not merely useless, but impolitic.

"From the moment you placed young Cortelyon in my hands my almost insane longing to be revenged for the foul wrong his grandfather had done me slackened and grew faint, and I recognized with overwhelming clearness what a blunder we had made and with what a burden I had saddled myself. Now that I had got the child into my keeping what was I to do with him? There was the rub. As for carrying out the dark hint you one day let drop--only by way of trying me, I feel sure, and with no thought that I would agree to act on it--as you know, I shrank from it aghast. I have a child of my own, and I could not forget it; and, little cause as I had to love young C., whatever else might happen to him his life was absolutely safe so long as he remained under my roof. But the perplexing question of how to dispose of him was one which allowed me no rest.

"As you are aware, from the date of the lad\'s arrival at Homecroft I put him into the sole charge of Mrs. Balchin (whom, as I have good reason for knowing, I can thoroughly trust), and kept him wholly secluded from the rest of the household, for whose benefit I invented a little fable explanatory of my reasons for acting as I did, but to what extent they believed it I have no means of knowing.

"If I had been uncomfortable before, you may imagine what effect your letter had on me in which you informed me that a reward of five hundred pounds was offered for the recovery of the missing heir. For the next few days I was like a distracted woman, turning over in my mind a dozen schemes, each one more wild and impracticable than the last.

"Then, all at once, the black clouds opened and a way of escape lay clear before me.

"As I daresay you may remember, not only Mrs. Balchin, but her husband, is in my service, the latter having acted as my coachman ever since my marriage. Well, a few mornings ago Balchin received a letter from a firm of lawyers in New York informing him that a legacy equivalent to five hundred pounds of English money had been left him by an uncle lately deceased, but that it would be requisite for him to go over to the States, and be prepared to prove his identity, before the money could be paid him. When he came to me and showed me his letter, and told me all this, I could have found it in my heart to embrace him.

"Can you guess, mon cher frère, what were the first words I said to myself? They were these: \'Balchin\'s wife shall keep him company on the voyage, and with them they shall take young Cortelyon. But they shall come back alone?< /p>

"There is no need to trouble you with details. It will be enough to state that by the evening of the second day after Balchin\'s receipt of the letter all arrangements had been made, and the little party of three were ready to start. They were to have the use of my carriage as far as Tuxford, where they would join the night coach for the south on their way to Liverpool, from which port they would sail by the first available packet for New York, Balchin is a capable man, and I had no fear about his failing to carry out the instructions laid down for him. Of course the expenses of the journey, so far as his wife and the child were concerned, were to be defrayed by me.

"I ought to mention here that I had often heard Mrs. Balchin refer to her numerous clan of cousins in America, and when I put the case before her she readily engaged, for a hundred pounds paid down, to get the boy permanently adopted by one of them. As you know, I could ill spare any such sum, but I would have made a still greater sacrifice rather than let the opportunity go by of ridding myself of what had latterly become the incubus of my life.

"The clocks were striking nine when they start............