mortuum_ of no value.

To be sure, he thought more than once that it was an odd coincidence,
but he could see no connection between the two circumstances
of madame's sudden death and Alick's fracture of that bottle of
hydrocyanic acid; and even if there should be any, he preferred not
to trace it. So the inquest was a mere show so far as getting at the
truth was concerned, and madame died and was buried in the mystery in
which she had lived.

Meantime, Leam had been sent to school, whence she was expected
to return a little more like other English girls than she had been
hitherto, and Mr. Dundas shut up Ford House--he went back to the
original name after madame's death--and left England to shake off in
travel the deadly despair that had fallen like a sickness on him and
taken all the flavor out of his life. He had never cared to search out
the real history of that fair beloved woman. Enough had come to his
knowledge, in the bills which had poured in from several Sherrington
tradesmen on the announcement of her marriage and then of her death,
to convince him that he had been duped in facts if not in feeling. For
among these bills was one from the local geologist for "a beginner's
cabinet of specimens," delivered just about the time when he,
Sebastian, had spent so many pleasant hours in arranging the fragments
which madame said represented both her knowledge and her lost
happiness; also one from the fancy repository, which sold everything,
for sundry water-color drawings and illuminated texts, a Table of
the Ten Commandments illustrated, and the like, which sufficiently
explained all on this side, and settled for ever the dead woman's
claims to the artistic and scientific merit with which Mr. Dundas and
the rector had credited her.