aunts survive. There are cousins alive; a son
and two daughters of that elder sister of Mr.
Vanstone's, who married Archdeacon Bartram,
and who died, as I told you, some years since.
But their interest is superseded by the
interest of the nearer blood. No, Miss Garth; we
must look facts as they are resolutely in the
face. The law of England, as it affects
illegitimate offspring is a disgrace to the nation.
It violates every principle of Christian mercy,
by visiting the sins of the parents on the
children; it encourages vice by depriving fathers
and mothers of the strongest of all motives for
making the atonement of marriage; and it claims
to produce these two abominable results, in the
names of morality and religion. It is not the
law of Scotland, not the law of France, not the
law (so far as I know) of any other civilised
community in Europe. A day may come, when
England will be ashamed of it; but that day has
not dawned yet. Mr. Vanstone's daughters are
Nobody's Children; and the law leaves them
helpless at their uncle's mercy."

He spoke those words with the energy of
honest indignation; and rose to his feet.

"It is useless to dwell longer," he said, "on
past and present. The morning is wearing
away; and the future claims us. The best
service which I can now render you, is to shorten
the period of your suspense. In less than an
hour I shall be on my way back to London.
Immediately on my arrival, I will ascertain the
speediest means of communicating with Mr.
Michael Vanstone; and will let you know the
result. Sad as the position of the two sisters
now is, we must look at it on its best side; we
must not lose hope."

"Hope?" repeated Miss Garth. "Hope from
Michael Vanstone!"

"Yes; hope from the influence on him of
time, if not from the influence of mercy. As I
have already told you, he is now an old man;
he cannot, in the course of nature, expect to
live much longer. If he looks back to the
period when he and his brother were first at
variance, he must look back through thirty
years. Surely, these are softening influences
which must affect any man? Surely, his own
knowledge of the shocking circumstances under
which he has become possessed of this money,
will plead with him, if nothing else does?"

"I will try to think as you do, Mr. Pendril
—I will try to hope for the best. Shall we be
left long in suspense before the decision reaches
us?"

"I trust not. The only delay on my side, will
be caused by the necessity of discovering the
place of Michael Vanstone's residence on the
Continent. I think I have the means of meeting
this difficulty successfully; and the moment I
reach London, those means shall be tried."

He took up his hat; and then returned to the
table, on which the father's last letter, and the
father's useless will, were lying side by side.
After a moment's consideration, he placed them
both in Miss Garth's hands.

"It may help you in breaking the hard truth to
the orphan sisters," he said, in his quiet self-
repressed way, "if they can see how their father
refers to them in his will—if they can read his
letter to me, the last he ever wrote. Let these
tokens tell them that the one idea of their
father's life, was the idea of making atonement
to his children. 'They may think bitterly of
their birth,' he said to me, at the time when I
drew this useless will; 'but they shall never
think bitterly of me. I will cross them in
nothing: they shall never know a sorrow that I
can spare them, or a want which I will not
satisfy.' He made me put those words in his
will, to plead for him when the truth which
he had concealed from his children in his
lifetime, was revealed to them after his death.
No law can deprive his daughters of the legacy
of his repentance and his love. I leave the will
and the letter to help you: I give them both into
your care."

He saw how his parting kindness touched
her, and thoughtfully hastened the farewell. She
took his hand in both her own, and murmured a
few broken words of gratitude. "Trust me to
do my best," he said—and, turning away with
a merciful abruptness, left her. In the broad,
cheerful sunshine, he had come in to reveal the
fatal truth. In the broad, cheerful sunshine—
that truth disclosed—he went out.

CHAPTER XIV.

IT was nearly an hour past noon, when Mr.
Pendril left the house. Miss Garth sat down
again at the table alone; and tried to face the
necessity which the event of the morning now
forced on her.

Her mind was not equal to the effort. She
tried to lessen the strain on it—to lose the sense
of her own position—to escape from her thoughts
for a few minutes only. After a little, she
opened Mr. Vanstone's letter, and mechanically
set herself to read it through once more.

One by one, the last words of the dead man
fastened themselves more and more firmly on
her attention. The unrelieved solitude, the
unbroken silence, helped their influence on her
mind, and opened it to those very impressions of
past and present which she was most anxious to
shun. As she reached the melancholy lines
which closed the letter, she found herself—
insensibly, almost unconsciously, at first—tracing
the fatal chain of events, link by link, backwards,
until she reached its beginning in the
contemplated marriage between Magdalen and
Francis Clare.

That marriage had taken Mr. Vanstone to his
old friend, with the confession on his lips which
would otherwise never have escaped them. Thence
came the discovery which had sent him home to
summon the lawyer to the house. That summons,
again, had produced the inevitable acceleration of
the Saturday's journey to Friday; the Friday of
the fatal accident, the Friday when he went to his
death. From his death, followed the second
bereavement which had made the house desolate;
the helpless position of the daughters whose
prosperous future had been his dearest care;