d 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 this 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 color. "Forgive me, my own love!" she
said, putting Magdalen's hand to her lips. "I have forgotten what I
ought to have remembered. I have thoughtlessly distressed you!"

"No!" said Magdalen; "you have encouraged me."

"Encouraged you?"

"You shall see."

With those words, she rose quietly from the sofa, and walked to the open
window. Before Norah could follow her, she had torn the Trust to pieces,
and had cast the fragments into the street.

She came back to the sofa and laid her head, with a deep sigh of relief,
on Norah's bosom. "I will owe nothing to my past life," she said. "I
have parted with it as I have parted with those torn morsels of paper.
All the thoughts and all the hopes belonging to it are put away from me
forever!"

"Magdalen, my husband will never allow you! I will never allow you
myself--"

"Hush! hush! What your husband thinks right, Norah, you and I will think
right too. I will take from _you_ what I would never have taken if that
letter had given it to me. The end I dreamed of has come. Nothing is
changed but the position I once thought we might hold toward each other.
Better as it is, my love--far, far better as it is!"

So she made the last sacrifice of the old perversity and the old pride.
So she entered on the new and nobler life.

* * * * * *

A month had passed. The autumn sunshine was bright even in the murky
streets, and the clocks in the neighborhood were just striking two, as
Magdalen returned alone to the house in Aaron's Buildings.

"Is he waiting for me?" she asked, anxiously, when the landlady let her
in.

He was waiting in the front room. Magdalen stole up the stairs and
knocked at the door. He called to her carelessly and absently to come
in, plainly thinking that it was only the servant who applied for
permission to enter the room.

"You hardly expected