"Don't attempt to describe it, Norah. Go
on with your story instead."

"Very well. My story takes me straight into
one of the rooms at St. Crux—a room about as
long as your street here; so dreary, so dirty, and
so dreadfully cold, that I shiver at the bare recollection
of it. Miss Garth was for getting out
of it again, as speedily as possible, and so was
I. But the housekeeper declined to let us off,
without first looking at a singular piece of furniture,
the only piece of furniture in the comfortless
place. She called it a tripod, I think.
(There is nothing to be alarmed at, Magdalen;
I assure you there is nothing to be alarmed at!)
At any rate, it was a strange three-legged thing,
which supported a great pan full of charcoal
ashes at the top. It was considered by all good
judges (the housekeeper told us) a wonderful
piece of chasing in metal; and she especially
pointed out the beauty of some scroll-work
running round the inside of the pan, with Latin
mottoes on it, signifying—I forget what. I felt
not the slightest interest in the thing myself,
but I looked close at the scroll-work to satisfy
the housekeeper. To confess the truth, she was
rather tiresome with her mechanically-learnt
lecture on fine metal-work—and, while she
was talking, I found myself idly stirring the
soft, feathery white ashes backwards and
forwards with my hand, pretending to listen, with
my mind a hundred miles away from her. I
don't know how long or how short a time I
had been playing with the ashes, when my finger
suddenly encountered a piece of crumpled
paper, hidden deep among them. When I brought
it to the surface it proved to be a letter—a long
letter full of cramped, close writing.—You have
anticipated my story, Magdalen, before I can
end it! You know as well as I do, that the
letter which my idle fingers found, was the
Secret Trust. Hold out your hand, my dear.
I have got George's permission to show it to
you—and there it is'!"

She put the Trust into her sister's hand.
Magdalen took it from her mechanically.
"You!" she said, looking at her sister with the
remembrance of all that she had vainly ventured,
of all that she had vainly suffered at St. Crux.
"You have found it!"

"Yes," said Norah, gaily. " The Trust has
proved no exception to the general perversity of
all lost things. Look for them, and they remain
invisible. Leave them alone, and they reveal
themselves! You and your lawyer, Magdalen,
were both justified in supposing that your
interest in this discovery was an interest of no
common kind. I spare you all our consultations
after I had produced the crumpled paper from
the ashes. It ended in George's lawyer being
written to, and in George himself being recalled
from the Continent. Miss Garth and I both
saw him immediately on his return; and he did,
what neither of us could do—he solved the
mystery of the Trust being hidden in the
charcoal ashes. Admiral Bartram, you must
know, was all his life subject to fits of somnambulism.
He had been found walking in his
sleep, not long before his death—just at the
time, too, when he was sadly troubled in his
mind on the subject of that very letter in your
hand. George's idea is that he must have
fancied he was doing, in his sleep, what he
would have died rather than do in his waking
moments—destroying the Trust. The fire had
been lit in the pan not long before, and he
no doubt saw it still burning in his dream.
This was George's explanation of the strange
position of the letter when I discovered it.
The question of what was to be done with the
letter itself came next, and was no easy question
for a woman to understand. But I determined
to master it, and I did master it, because it related
to you."

"Let me try to master it in my turn," said
Magdalen. " I have a particular reason for
wishing to know as much about this letter, as
you know yourself. What has it done for others?
and what is it to do for me?"

"My dear Magdalen, how strangely you look
at it! how strangely you talk of it! Worthless
as it may appear, that morsel of paper gives you
a fortune."

"Is my only claim to the fortune, the claim
which this letter gives me?"

"Yes—the letter is your only claim. Shall I
try if I can explain it, in two words? Taken
by itself, the letter might, in the lawyer's opinion,
have been made a matter of dispute—
though I am sure George would have sanctioned
no proceeding of that sort. Taken,
however, with the postscript which Admiral
Bartram attached to it (you will see the lines,
if you look under the signature on the third
page), it becomes legally binding, as well as
morally binding, on the admiral's representatives.
I have exhausted my small stock of legal
words, and must go on in my own language,
instead of in the lawyer's. The end of the thing
was simply this. All the money went back to
Mr. Noel Vanstone's estate (another legal word!
my vocabulary is richer than I thought), for
one plain reason—that it had not been employed
as Mr. Noel Vanstone directed. If
Mrs. Girdlestone had lived, or if George had
married me a few months earlier, results would
have been just the other way. As it is, half
the money has been already divided between
Mr. Noel Vanstone's next of kin; which means,
translated into plain English, my husband, and
his poor bedridden sister—who took the money
formally, one day, to satisfy the lawyer, and who
gave it back again generously, the next, to
satisfy herself. So much for one half of the
legacy. The other half, my dear, is all yours.
How strangely events happen, Magdalen! It
is only two years since you and I were left
disinherited orphans and we are sharing our poor
father's fortune between us, after all!"

"Wait a little, Norah. Our shares come to
us in very different ways."

"Do they? Mine comes to me, by my husband.
Yours comes to you—- " She stopped
confusedly, and changed colour. " Forgive me,
my own love! " she said, putting Magdalen's hand