“You did turn the king pretty often,” said Frank, when the door closed.  “I’m glad there was no row.”

“Row!  I’d have broken his dirty neck.  Not content with swindling poor Beacham Brown, he tries it on with the contributors.  I wish I had been able to get him to go on.  I would willingly have fleeced him of every penny he has in the world.”

Lizzie bade them good-night, and the servant brought in a letter for Mike, a letter which she explained had been incorrectly addressed, and had just come from the hotel.  Frank took up a newspaper which Thigh had left on the table.  He turned it over, glancing hastily through it.  Then something caught his eye, and the expression of his face changed.  And what caused him pain could be no more than a few words, for the paper fell instantly from his hands and he sat quite still, staring into space.  But neither the sound of the paper falling, nor yet the frozen rigidity of his attitude drew Mike’s thoughts from the letter he was reading.  He glanced hastily through it, then he read it attentively, lingering over every word.  He seemed to suck sweetness out of every one; it was the deep, sensual absorption of a fly in a pot of treacle.  His eyes were dim with pleasure long drawn out; they saw nothing, and it was some moments before the pallor and pain of Frank’s face dispelled the melliferous Edens in which Mike’s soul moved.

“What is the matter, old chap?  Are you ill?”

Frank did not answer.

“Are you ill?  Shall I get you a drink?”

“No, no,” he said.  “I assure you it is nothing; no, it is nothing.”  He struggled for a moment for shame’s sake to keep his secret, but it was more than he could bear.  “Ah!” he said, “it is all over; I’m done for—­read.”

He stooped to pick up the paper.  Mike took the paper from him and read—­

“Thursday—­Lady Mount Rorke, of a son.”

Whilst one man hears his doom pronounced, another sees a golden fortune fallen in his hand, and the letter Mike had just read was from a firm of solicitors, informing him that Lady Seeley had left him her entire fortune, three thousand a year in various securities, and a property in Berkshire; house, pictures, plate—­in a word, everything she possessed.  The bitterness of his friend’s ill fortune contrasting with the sweetness of his own good fortune, struck his heart, and he said, with genuine sorrow in his voice—­

“I’m awfully sorry, old chap.”

“There’s no use being sorry for me, I’m done for; I shall never be Lord Mount Rorke now.  That child, that wife, are paupers; that castle, that park, that river, all—­everything that I was led to believe would be mine one day, has passed from me irrevocably.  It is terribly cruel—­it seems too cruel to be true; all those old places—­you know them—­all has passed from me.  I never believed Mount Rorke would have an heir, he is nearly seventy; it is too cruel.”

Tears swam in his eyes, and covering his face in his hands he burst into a storm of heavy sobbing.