rallied speedily, and pursued his detail of his doings at that fair town
of Normandy.

Marston knew Sir Wynston well; and he rightly calculated that whatever
effect his experience of the world might have had in intensifying his
selfishness or hardening his heart, it certainly could have had none in
improving a character originally worthless and unfeeling. He knew,
moreover, that his wealthy cousin was gifted with a great deal of that
small cunning which is available for masking the little scheming of
frivolous and worldly men; and that Sir Wynston never took trouble of any
kind without a sufficient purpose, having its center in his own personal
gratification.

This visit greatly puzzled Marston; it gave him even a vague sense of
uneasiness. Could there exist any flaw in his own title to the estate of
Gray Forest? He had an unpleasant, doubtful sort of remembrance of some
apprehensions of this kind, when he was but a child, having been
whispered in the family. Could this really be so, and could the
baronet have been led to make this unexpected visit merely for the
purpose of personally examining into the condition or a property of
which he was about to become the legal invader? The nature of this
suspicion affords, at all events, a fair gauge of Marston's estimate
of his cousin's character. And as he revolved these doubts from time to
time, and as he thought of Mademoiselle de Barras's transient, but
unaccountable embarrassment at the mention of Rouen by Sir Wynston--an
embarrassment which the baronet himself appeared for a moment to
reciprocate--undefined, glimmering suspicions of another kind flickered
through the darkness of his mind. He was effectually puzzled; his
surmises and conjectures baffled; and he more than half repented that he
had acceded to his cousin's proposal, and admitted him as an inmate of