The packet found by Mr. Danvers was the same which, it may be remembered, was lifted from a table in Willoughby's apartment by Geoffery, while Alfred, to meet whose eye it had been thus conspicuously placed by his poor brother, was too much absorbed in grief to notice what was passing.

The peculiar circumstances attendant on the death-scene, and the certain knowledge thus obtained, that poison had been taken, and would, therefore, on opening the body be found, suggested to Geoffery's evil mind the first faint glimpses of the diabolical scheme which so many after circumstances so unexpectedly favoured. Had there been a fire in his apartment that night, he would for security have certainly burnt the packet; but it fortunately happened that there was not, and so agitated and occupied was his mind in the contemplation of the very possibility of compassing at once the hideous crime and enormous gain, which he was balancing one against the other, that the idea of destroying the dangerous document by means of his candle never once occurred to him. Accordingly, when he had sufficiently considered its contents, he placed it in his pocket-book. After this, he more than once took it out, with the intention of consigning it to the flames, but when in the very act his hand was stayed by more than one consideration. In the first place, there was a kind of bequest to himself; and if the accusations against Alfred came to nothing, he should want the sum very much; then he sometimes felt a dread, that by a bare possibility, he might himself,—as having a remote contingent interest in the death of Willoughby, and having arrived too that very night at Arden,—be accused of being an accomplice of Alfred's; and in either case this packet laid down in some of the apartments, would be picked up, and being supposed to have hitherto merely lain unnoticed, both clear himself of all suspicion and secure his bequest; for though this bequest was not left in a binding form, he had no doubt that Alfred would religiously make it good. No place, however, seemed safe enough for keeping this important document but about his own person, and accordingly he so disposed of it; which serves to account for its being found in the manner described.

The packet itself presented a melancholy picture of poor Willoughby's disordered state of mind, brought down somewhat in the form of a journal, and with a kind of method mingled with its wildness to the very evening of his death. In proof of the strange blending of rational considerations, there was a sort of distribution of his personal property; for besides the bequest to Geoffery, already alluded to, there were kind gifts to his sisters, his mother, his aunt Dorothea, and to several old servants and pensioners.

Alfred, however, was his main object; the tenor of the whole letter breathed the most devoted tenderness towards him, mingled with a madman's notion, that he was about to perform an heroic act, in removing the obstacles to his happiness. It entreated Alfred not to grieve for him—he was only flying a misery he could not endure; seeking a resting place he longed to find. Why should not all those who remained behind be happy—quite happy, and never think of him who could so well be spared—who never should have been born—who seemed to have been called into existence but to stand in the way of others, and be himself wretched!

"Yet I know that you will grieve for me, Alfred," it continued, "and the thought of how much you will grieve sometimes makes me shrink from seeking the rest I long for. But it will be for a time only, and then you too will be happy. Yes, you must be happy, Alfred!"

Caroline's letter was inclosed in the packet, and some comments made, in a strain of forced, unnatural calmness, on Lady Palliser's cruel policy. While the whole, which seemed to have been written at many different periods, concluded with a sort of separate part, dated the day of the evening of his death; detailing minutely how he had at length possessed himself of some arsenic, and declaring his intention of that very evening putting an end to the harrassing struggles of his mind, which he here describe wildly, as pursuing him every where—goading him on—hunting him down—making rest or peace on earth impossible.

"Forgive me, then, dear Alfred," he concluded; "forgive my quitting you thus; for I am weary, and long to sleep, though it were in the grave! Except that short moment when I closed my eyes on your kind bosom, I have not slept I know not when."

This, the dying memorial of poor Willoughby, was but a melancholy vehicle for joyful intelligence to Lady Arden. In her mind, however, at such a moment, there was room but for one idea—Alfred was safe! Even her pride in him, which had mingled with despair, was forgotten in tenderness.

She left all the care of his public justification, with the necessary forms for his restoration to his right, in the hands of Mr. Danvers and Lord Darlingford; and though, as a precaution lest Alfred should lose one moment of the relief of mind such intelligence was calculated to bestow, she had dispatched, at the first instant, an express, bearing in her own writing the three words, "You are justified." Nevertheless she had followed her own messenger with so much expedition, that she overtook him at the gates of Geneva, awaiting their being opened; and thus became, as we have seen, the first to announce to her exiled son the happy change which had taken place in his circumstances.

While her ladyship was thus occupied, the townspeople of Arden, impatient to display the returning tide of their affection and respect towards their young landlord, were illuminating every pane of glass they possessed, and lighting bonfires on every rising ground in the neighbourhood, in honour of his acquittal; while at the same time their indignation against Geoffery knew no bounds. His motive in suppressing and concealing Alfred's letter spoke for itself; and so strong was the general feeling of abhorrence which it excited, that the night after he was buried, his body was disinterred by the mob, and placed on a gibbet on the road-side, between Arden and Arden Park. His coadjutor, too, Mr. Fips, was blamed even more than he deserved, if that indeed were possible: that is to say, he was universally believed to have been a party to the suppression of Willoughby's packet; a belief engendered, and, in a great measure justified, by his being Geoffery's right-hand man on all occasions, and still more by the active part he had taken previously to and on the trial, as well as by his own general villany of character.

Accordingly, during the illuminations for Alfred's acquittal, the mob began by smashing every window in Fips's house; and hatred of Gripe, as he was called, being a common cause, those who had commenced the attack were soon joined by so many who had a personal feeling of revenge, founded on a lively remembrance of ruin entailed on themselves and their families by his means, that before morning they literally left not one stone, or rather one brick, upon another of Fips's dwelling; while himself and his daughter narrowly escaped with their lives, without being able to carry with them a single paper, or a vestige of property of any kind. What was of value found plenty of customers, who thought it no robbery to take back a little of their own; and as to the parchments, &c., a sagacious ringleader proposed that they should all be emptied out at the foot of the market cross; that so, when there was light in the morning, every one might come and choose his own. Thus did many a man get back his documents without being compelled to pay the unjust and enormous bill for which they were held as security; whilst every thing in the shape of bill, book, or account standing against any individual, was carefully consigned to the flames. All the town, in short, felt it more or less a blessing that the hornet's nest had been destroyed. As to the authorities, they had themselves, some of them, felt the gripe of Mr. Fips in their day: after, therefore, every step they judged proper was duly taken to discover who had been the perpetrators of the late riots, it was decided, at a public meeting held for the purpose—"That the very unjustifiable outrages which had been committed on the night of the — of ——, 18—, could not be brought home to any particular individuals."