"We shall see," returned Annon between his teeth.

Here their host entered, and the subject of course was dropped. But the
major's words rankled in the young man's mind, and would have been
doubly bitter had he known that their confidential conversation had been
overheard. On either side of the great fireplace was a door leading to a
suite of rooms which had been old Sir Jasper's. These apartments had
been given to Maurice Treherne, and he had just returned from London,
whither he had been to consult a certain famous physician. Entering
quietly, he had taken possession of his rooms, and having rested and
dressed for dinner, rolled himself into the library, to which led the
curtained door on the right. Sitting idly in his light, wheeled chair,
ready to enter when his cousin appeared, he had heard the chat of Annon
and the major. As he listened, over his usually impassive face passed
varying expressions of anger, pain, bitterness, and defiance, and when
the young man uttered his almost fierce "We shall see," Treherne smiled
a scornful smile and clenched his pale hand with a gesture which proved
that a year of suffering had not conquered the man's spirit, though it
had crippled his strong body.

A singular face was Maurice Treherne's; well-cut and somewhat haughty
features; a fine brow under the dark locks that carelessly streaked it;
and remarkably piercing eyes. Slight in figure and wasted by pain, he
still retained the grace as native to him as the stern fortitude which
enabled him to hide the deep despair of an ambitious nature from every
eye, and bear his affliction with a cheerful philosophy more pathetic
than the most entire abandonment to grief. Carefully dressed, and with
no hint at invalidism but the chair, he bore himself as easily and
calmly as if the doom of lifelong helplessness did not hang over him. A