"If Ford does his duty—and most men do their duty for fifty guineas—you will be reading these words either on the eve of your wedding-day, or on the eve of the day on which you will be preparing to leave Riverscourt, and to give up all that which, since my death, has been your own.

"Feeling sure that I was right, my dear Diana, in our many arguments, and that I have won in the contest of our wills, I would bet a good deal—if betting is allowed in the other world—that you are reading this on the eve of your wedding-day—am I right, Inglestry, old chap?—having found a man who will soon teach you that wifehood and motherhood and dependence on the stronger sex are a woman's true vocation, and her best chance of real happiness in life.

"If so, look up, honestly, and say: 'Uncle Falcon, you have won'; and I hereby forgive Inglestry all his fuss and bluster, and you, the obstinacy of years—and may Heaven bless the wedding-day.

"But—ah, there's a 'but' in all things human! Perhaps the world where I shall be, when you are reading these lines, is the only place where buts cease to be, and where all things go straight on to fulfilment.

"But—your happiness, my own dear girl, is of too much real importance for me to risk it, on the possible chance of the right man not having turned up; or of you—true Rivers that you are—proving obstinate to the end.

"Therefore—enclosed herewith you will find a later codicil than that known to you and Inglestry, duly witnessed by Ford and his clerk, nullifying the other, and leaving you my entire property as stated in my will, subject to no conditions whatsoever.

"Thus, my dear Diana, if you are on the eve of preparing to leave Riverscourt, you may unpack your trunks, and stay there, with your uncle's love and blessing. It is all your own.

"Or—but knowing you as I do, I hardly think this likely—if you are on the eve of making a marriage which is not one of love, and which is causing you in prospect distress and unhappiness—why, break it off, child, and send the man packing. If he is marrying you for your money, he deserves the lesson; and if he loves you for your splendid self, why he is not much of a man if he has been engaged to such a girl as my niece Diana, without having been able to win her, before the eve of the wedding-day!

"Anyway, you now have a free hand, child; and if my whim of testing fate for you with the first codicil, has put you in a tight place, old Inglestry will see you through, and you must forgive your departed uncle, who loves you more than you ever knew,

"FALCON RIVERS."