looking at the paper, and seeming to soliloquize rather than to address his question to anyone else. 

As this was the first time that the "S." in Madeleine's note had been openly assumed to stand for Schuyler Carleton, there was a stir of excitement all around the room. 

"I don't know," said Carleton, but a dull, red flush spread over his white face and his voice trembled. 

"You don't know!" said Tom, in cutting tones. "Man, you _must_ know." 

But no reply was made, and, dropping into a chair, Tom buried his face in both hands and remained thus for a long time. 

Tom Willard was a large, stout man, and possessed of the genial and merry demeanor which so often accompanies avoirdupois. Save for his occasional, though really rare, bursts of temper, Tom was always in a joking and laughing mood. 

To see him thus in an agonized, speechless despair deeply affected Mrs. Markham. Tom had always been a favorite with her, and not even Madeleine had regretted more than she the estrangement between Richard Van Norman and his nephew. And even as Mrs. Markham looked at the bowed head of the great strong man she suddenly bethought herself for the first time that Tom was now heir to the Van Norman fortune. 

She wondered if he had himself yet realized it; and then she scolded herself for letting such thoughts intrude so unfittingly soon. And yet she well knew that it would not be in ordinary human nature long to ignore the fact of such a sudden change of fortunes. As she looked at Tom her glance strayed toward Mr. Carleton, and then the thought struck her that what Tom had gained this man had lost. For had Madeleine lived the Van Norman money would have been, in a way, at the disposal of her husband. The girl's death then would make Tom a rich man, while Schuyler Carleton would remain poor. He had always been poor, or at least far from wealthy, and more than one gossip was of the opinion that he had wooed Miss Van Norman not entirely because of disinterested love for her. 

While Mrs. Markham was busy with these fast-following thoughts a voice in the doorway made her look up. 

A quiet, unimportant-looking man stood there, and was respectfully addressing Doctor Hills. 

"I'm Hunt, sir," he said, "a plain-clothes man from headquarters." 

The three men in the 

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