her consoler that they conducted their affair with praiseworthy
attention to outward decency. She went to America by one steamer, and
purchased a divorce in Iowa for two hundred dollars. He followed in the
next steamer, and they were duly united in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, the
Ravengar household, left to the ungoverned passions of three males,
became more and more impossible, and at length old Ravengar expired. In
his will he stated that it was only from a stern sense of justice that
he divided his considerable fortune in equal shares between Louis and
Owen. Had he consulted his inclination, he would have left one shilling
to Louis, and the remainder to Owen, who alone had been a true son to
him.

It was a too talkative will. Testators, like politicians, should never
explain.

Louis, who got as a favour half the fortune of which the whole was, in
his opinion, his by right, was naturally exasperated in the highest
degree by the terms of the indiscreet testament, and on the day of the
funeral he parted from the son of his step-mother, swearing, in a
somewhat melodramatic manner, that he would be revenged. Hugo was then
twenty-one, and for twenty-five years he had waited in vain for symptoms
of the revenge.

And now they met again, in the truest sense strangers. And each had a
reason for humouring the other, for each wanted to know what the other
had to do with Camilla Payne.

'So you're determined, Louis,' said Hugo lightly, 'to bring me to my
knees about the transfer of my business to a limited company, eh?'