"What are you going to do?"
"Shall I ring up Mr. Bowden?"
"Not yet, please," begged Carmel. "Leave me a moment!"
She was still standing gazing out through the window over the English woods and meadows that she had grown to love so dearly, those wide acres of which any one might have been proud. At last she turned round and answered:
"I am going now to tell the news to the rightful owner of the Chase."
Everard was sitting in the stone summer-house in the garden, struggling with a difficult problem in mathematics, when suddenly through the ivy-framed doorway danced Princess Carmel, an excited vision, with carnation cheeks, and dark eyes twinkling like stars. She stopped on the threshold and dropped him a pretty curtsey, then a great generous light seemed to shine in her face as she announced:
"Signor Everard, allow me to hand you back your inheritance!"
It was the triumph of her life.
Mr. Bowden, on being sent for to examine the will, found all in perfect order. The legacies to friends and to the other grandchildren were exactly the same as in the former will, the only difference being that the positions of the two cousins were reversed, Carmel receiving a handsome sum of money, and Everard inheriting the property. There was no doubt that the impetuous old squire had repented his hasty decision, but not liking to confess such weakness to the family lawyer, had drawn up his own will and hidden it in the secret drawer of his desk. Possibly he himself was not sure which of the two documents he wished to stand, and had kept this in reserve while he vacillated. Fate, for a year and a half, had decided in favor of Carmel, then the eternal balance had swung slowly back.