less degree, Mrs. Verner and Dr. West were interested: the one in her son; the other in that son’s wife. But the doctor was not an inmate of Verner’s Pride; and Mrs. Tynn could have testified that she had been present in the room, and never left it during each of the doctor’s professional visits, subsequent to the drawing out of the codicil. As for Mrs. Verner, she had not been out of her bed. Mr. Verner, at the last, had gone off suddenly, without pain, and there had been no time to call his wife. Mrs. Tynn excused the negligence, by saying, she did not think her master had been quite so near his end: and it was a true excuse. But no one dreamt of attaching suspicion to Mrs. Verner, or to Dr. West. “I’d rather it had been Lionel to succeed, than Frederick,” spoke the former, honestly, some faint idea that people might think she was pleased, suggesting the avowal to her. “Lionel has more right than Fred to Verner’s Pride.”
“More right!” ejaculated Dr. West, warmly. “Frederick Massingbird has no right, by the side of Lionel Verner. Why Mr. Verner ever willed it away from Lionel we could not understand.”
“Fred needn’t take it—even if the codicil can’t be found—he can give it back to Lionel by deed of gift,” said practical Jan. “I should.”
“That my master meant Mr. Lionel to succeed, is certain,” interposed Tynn, the butler. “Nearly the last word he said to me, before the breath went out of his body, was an injunction to serve Mr. Lionel faithfully at Verner’s Pride, as I had served him. There can be no difficulty in Mr. Lionel’s succeeding, when his intentions were made so plain.”
“Be quiet, Tynn,” said Lionel. “I succeed by means of legal right to Verner’s Pride, or I will not succeed at all.”
“That’s true,” acquiesced the lawyer. “A will is a will, and must be acted upon. How on earth has that codicil got spirited away?”
How indeed! But for the plain fact, so positive and palpable before them, of the codicil’s absence, they would have declared the loss to be an impossibility. Up stairs and down, the house was vainly searched for it; and the conclusion was at length unwillingly come to, that Mr. Verner had repented of his bequest, had taken the codicil out of the desk, and burnt it. The suggestion came from Mr. Bitterworth: and Mrs. Tynn acknowledged that it was just possible Mr. Verner’s strength would allow him to accomplish so much, while her back was turned. And yet, how reconcile this with his dying charges to Lionel, touching the management of the estate?
The broad fact that there was the will, and that alone to act upon, untempered by a codicil, shone out all too clearly. Lionel Verner was displaced, and Frederick Massingbird was the heir.
Oh, if some impossible electric telegraph could but have carried the news over the waves of the sea, to the ship, ploughing along the mid-path of the ocean; if the two fugitives in her could but have been spirited back again, like the codicil seemed to have been spirited away, how triumphantly would they have entered upon their sway at Verner’s Pride!
A GOSSIP ABOUT THE ART TREASURES AT
SOUTH KENSINGTON.
When the Authorities at the South Kensington Museum came to the very wise resolution of forming a temporary collection of works of art of a bygone period, in order that foreigners as well as our own countrymen flocking to London at this time might have some notion of the exceeding richness of this country in that way, they could have had no idea of the positive embarrassment of riches which has now poured in upon them.
Fortunately, one of the large and well-lighted courts of the new building was available to receive those treasures of art workmanship now to be found more abundantly in England than in any other part of the world.
One of the reasons for our wealth in this respect arises from the fact that, during the troubled state of Europe at the end of the last century, our collectors eagerly availed themselves of the opportunities then offered for procuring fine works of art. Since that period the gold of England has acted like a magnet in drawing hitherwards choice works of art, which no other power could move. These foreign works, added to our own rich stores of national art, have made this country the centre of the greater part of the known art productions of past times; but from our insular habits, and from the fact that by far the greater part were distributed about the country in the hands of private collectors, no general knowledge could be obtained of what we really possessed. Now, therefore, that this superb collection is brought together, and arranged so that nearly all the objects can be well examined, an opportunity occurs not only of seeing, but of comparing the different schools of art which each separate epoch has produced; and, more than that, it enables us to judge in some measure of the position of art in the present day, as seen in the International Exhibition, with the art productions of past ages.
A very important part of the collection consists of the large number of specimens of goldsmiths’ work, and this, too, of all periods; but there is one object of such great interest, of the best period of Greek art, that it deserves especial notice. It consists of a necklace and other ornaments, forming the parure of an Alexandrian belle some two or three centuries before Christ. It is lent by Signor Castellani of Rome, and was discovered about a year ago at Alexandria. It has long been known that the ancients produced fine works in the precious metals, but it is only at a comparatively recent period that we find rising from the forgotten cemeteries of Etruria and of Greece and her colonies, objects in gold, of a workmanship so perfect, that not only all the refinements of our modern civilisation cannot imitate it, but cannot even explain theoretically the process of its execution. No man has done more to unravel this mystery of manipulation than the intelligent and enthusiastic Signor Castellani, as a glance at his exquisite reproductions in the Italian Court of the Great Exhibition will abundantly testify. Indeed it would seem impossible that delicacy and minuteness could any
