Mr. Temple’s sudden death had also naturally created great excitement both at Woodlea Hall and at the farm at Woodside. The squire had breakfasted with his wife as usual on the morning it occurred, and about an hour later Mrs. Temple had gone into the library to ask him for some money she required, when to her surprise and alarm she found him with his gray head lying on the writing-table before him, and his arms hanging limply by his side.

“Phillip!” she exclaimed, and ran up to him, and laid her hands on his shoulder.

But the face that had ever looked gently at her did not stir. Then Mrs. Temple raised his head, and the moment she did so she gave a wild shriek. For there was no mistaking the pallid gray hue of the complexion, or the dull, glazed, half-open eyes. Mr. Temple was dead, and Mrs. Temple, ever impulsive and excitable, ran screaming to the door of the room to tell the news and summon the household.

They sent for the doctor, and the newly-made widow knelt by the squire’s side and chafed his cold hands, and wailed and wept for the man to whom in his lifetime she had given no love. Now she regretted this, she clung to him, and would fain have recalled him to her side.

And presently her mother arrived on the scene and then her father. Mrs. Layton’s first thought when she heard the squire was dead was to speculate on how much he had left behind him, and to groan in spirit at the idea that now her daughter would probably have to leave the Hall.

“And that John Temple will be coming, I suppose,” she whispered to her husband, “and where will we all be?”

“My dear, to speak of such things in the presence of death—” began the vicar, mildly. But Mrs. Layton turned her little eager face away from him before he could complete his homily.

“I must see after things,” she said, which meant a great deal to Mrs. Layton’s mind. First she had to induce her daughter to leave the dead man’s side and go to her own apartments. Then she ran from room to room, picking up little things here and there that she thought at such a time she could collect without remark. Nothing came wrong to Mrs. Layton! A few sheets of note-paper, an envelope or two, anything in fact that she could lay her hands on.

“They will never be missed; they are of no value,” she told herself as she gathered her spoil together. She was haunted by the idea that John Temple might arrive at any moment, and that she would not have such another opportunity.

The servants were all down-stairs talking of their master’s sudden death, and the whole household naturally disarranged. Mrs. Temple was in a state of half-remorseful grief and excitement, and she also was now thinking of the coming of John Temple.

“He will be master now, I suppose,” she thought bitterly, “and I shall be turned out.”

She remembered, too, the morning he had left Woodlea through her interference, and mentally saw again his pale, set face as he had told her he would never return. He would return now, and would that girl come with him? Mrs. Temple kept asking herself. For up to the time of the squire’s death nothing had been seen or heard at the Hall of John Temple since the morning he quitted it. Mr. Temple had felt naturally offended by his nephew’s reticence, but at last, at Mr. Churchill’s earnest request, he had written to John Temple’s bankers to ask if they could tell him of his nephew’s whereabouts. The bankers wrote to inform the squire, in reply, that Mr. John Temple was abroad, and that before leaving England he had taken out a considerable sum of money in letters of credit. They wrote nothing more; they had, in fact, been instructed by John Temple before he left England to give no information if any inquiries were made about him. He had gone away a moody and remorseful man, but Mr. Harrison, the solicitor, knew where to find him, and also some officers of the police force. With these he had left orders, which he believed now to be useless, that should anything ever be heard of the lady who had disappeared from the Grosvenor Hotel on such a date that he was at once to be communicated with. But John Temple believed that May was dead; believed that in a sudden frenzy of grief and shame she had destroyed herself. And many a dark and dismal hour he had stood looking down into the murky river, moodily thinking it was sweeping over the fair head of his young love. It was on one of these miserable occasions that Kathleen Weir had seen him, and a sudden feeling of hate and anger had swept through his heart at the sight of her. And shortly after this encounter he had left England. He felt, in truth, that he could bear the strain no farther; that the terrible haunting memory of the young life he believed he had destroyed would overthrow his reason if he remained any longer on the spot.

In the meanwhile Mr. Churchill, in spite of his own secret anxieties, had gone about telling his neighbors that his daughter and her husband, Mr. John Temple, were abroad. There was no one to contradict this, yet somehow the impression got about that everything was not quite right. Perhaps it was the way in which Mrs. Churchill drew in her firm lips when her husband spoke of his daughter. At all events, she never spoke of her, nor did she encourage her stepsons to do so.

At first the boys had been overjoyed when they heard of May’s marriage, and looked forward to many a happy day at the Hall. But when week after week passed, and May never wrote to them, they could not understand it.

What was to prevent her writing? they asked each other, doubtfully, even if she were twenty times abroad. Then the banker’s letter confirmed the news that John Temple was abroad, and after that, all through the winter months, neither at the Hall nor at the homestead, was anything more heard of John Temple or May.

The squire died in the early spring-time, and the news reached Woodside in less than an hour after Mrs. Temple had found her husband dead. It naturally threw Mr. Churchill, and even his wife, into a state of excitement.

“Now, we must hear from them!” cried Mr. Churchill.

“We will know the truth at last,” said Mrs. Churchill, in a more subdued tone.

“What truth?” answered her husband, sharply. “They were married, and now Mr. John Temple is the squire of Woodlea, and May is his wife—but all the same, I am sorry to hear the old squire has passed away.”

“How will they let Mr. John Temple know that his uncle is dead, if they do not know where he is?” suggested Mrs. Churchill in her practical way.

“I will see to that,” replied Mr. Churchill, determinedly. “There will be no one, I suppose, to look after things at the Hall now but the stupid old parson and his skin-flint of a wife. Madam won’t know anything about business, so as May’s father I will ride over at once, and of course Mr. Temple, as heir, must be immediately telegraphed for. His bankers, by this time, probably really do know where he is.”

“I think you are quite right to go, William,” said Mrs. Churchill, who, in truth, was full of curiosity to know all about the matter.

So Mr. Churchill mounted his horse and speedily reached the Hall in a state of scarcely suppressed excitement. And his coming was not unnoticed. Mrs. Layton, from one of the upper windows, peered down into the court-yard when she heard the sound of his horse’s hoofs below, and gave a kind of cry when she saw who it was.

“Here is the first of them!” she exclaimed aloud to herself, and then she hastily looked round the room to see what she could pick up before “the others arrived.”

She caught up some trifle, and then hurried down to her daughter’s bedroom.

“Rachel!” she cried, “that Churchill has arrived; you must rouse yourself, and lock up all the jewels and silver, or they will be laying hands on everything.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” answered Mrs. Temple, coldly.

“What, you’ll let them have the diamonds!” screamed Mrs. Layton, in absolute despair.

“The diamonds are heirlooms, so I suppose John Temple’s wife—if he has one—has a right to wear them,” answered Mrs. Temple, contemptuously. “I will have nothing touched until John Temple arrives.”

“Then you’ll lose everything! Do you suppose that low people like these Churchills will not seize whatever they can get? At all events, secure the jewels and the money in the house.”

“Will you go away and leave me alone!” cried Mrs. Temple, passionately. “Surely on a day like this—” And then she suddenly burst into tears. Even to her wayward mind, this greed was shocking in the house of death.

Her mother left her with uplifted hands after this outburst. But Mrs. Layton was still determined not to waste her time. She therefore hurried into the poor squire’s dressing-room and snatched up and secured on her person his diamond studs, which were lying in a tray on the toilet table. Then she looked eagerly around for his keys. He was sure to have money locked away somewhere, she was thinking. But she could not find the keys, and after a vain search for them she opened a linen drawer and turned out half a dozen or so of pocket handkerchiefs.

“Poor man, he will never want them more,” she reflected; “and I have such bad colds every winter they’ll come in nice and handy, and the servants were sure to have stolen them.”

Having pocketed these also, she went down-stairs to see Mr. Churchill. She found him closeted with her husband, the vicar. The two men were discussing the best plan how immediately to inform John Temple of his uncle’s death. Mr. Churchill had told the vicar of the banker’s letter, and had suggested this as a means of communication with the new heir.

The letter would probably be in the drawers of the writing-table in the library, Mr. Churchill had said, but the vicar—a timid man—had shrunk a little back from approaching a spot where so lately had lain the poor squire’s gray head. Mr. Churchill, however, urged that it should be done, and they were talking it over when Mrs. Layton entered the room.

She extended her thin, claw-like hand to Mr. Churchill, but coldly.

“This is a sad affair, madam,” said Mr. Churchill as he took it.

“Not for everyone,” she could not help replying, spitefully.

“I think for everyone,” answered the farmer, sturdily; “we all have to go, but the squire was a good man, and a good friend to all who knew him. There was but one opinion about the squire.”

“But one, I am sure,” said the vicar, weakly.

“I have been talking to the vicar, madam,” went on Mr. Churchill, still sturdily, “about the best and quickest way of communicating with Mr. John Temple.”

“But you have not his address, I understood,” said Mrs. Layton, quickly and viciously.

“That will be soon found, madam.”

“But I thought not,” replied Mrs. Layton, yet more viciously. “I understand that since Mr. John Temple quitted this house in such an extraordinary manner, that neither he nor—your daughter have ever been heard of.”

Mr. Churchill’s clear, brown face turned a dusky red.

“You are mistaken then,” he said, sharply. “I saw and heard of them both. I saw the register of their marriage and the clergyman who married them and the two ladies who were present at the ceremony! But I won’t discuss it. Vicar, will you go with me to seek the banker’s letter in the squire’s writing-table, or shall I go alone?”

“Of course you must go, James?” exclaimed Mrs. Layton. “There may be family affairs in the writing-table not intended for Mr. Churchill’s inspection. But I think this haste is most indecent; the poor man not cold yet, and everyone in such a hurry to get what is left! But we could expect nothing else.”

With this parting shot Mrs. Layton quitted the room, and half an hour later the letter from John Temple’s banker informing the squire that his nephew was abroad, was found by Mr. Churchill and the vicar in one of the drawers of the writing-table in the library. By this time the dead man had been borne away, yet there were traces of his familiar presence all around. The pen he had been using when his summons came; an unfinished letter lying on the blotting pad; the keys Mrs. Layton had coveted; the chair on which he had died!

Yet Mr. Churchill sat down there, and deemed he was doing his duty as he did so, and deliberately wrote to John Temple, his successor. He also wrote to the bankers, requesting them to forward the inclosed letter to Mr. John Temple at once when they received it, if they knew his address, and, at the same time, suggested that a telegram might be sent immediately. Then, having done this, he looked around a little sadly.

“Poor man,” he said to the vicar, “everything reminds one of him—ah, well, it’s very sad.”

But his heart was not sad as he rode home. He felt almost as though he himself had come into some portion of the dead man’s inheritance.