ughters."

"Wait," said Miss Garth, "wait a little." She pushed her gray hair back
from her temples, and struggled with the sickness of heart, the dreadful
faintness of terror, which would have overpowered a younger or a less
resolute woman. Her eyes, dim with watching, weary with grief, searched
the lawyer's unfathomable face. "His unhappy daughters?" she repeated
to herself, vacantly. "He talks as if there was some worse calamity than
the calamity which has made them orphans." She paused once more; and
rallied her sinking courage. "I will not make your hard duty, sir, more
painful to you than I can help," she resumed. "Show me the place in the
will. Let me read it, and know the worst."

Mr. Pendril turned back to the first page, and pointed to a certain
place in the cramped lines of writing. "Begin here," he said.

She tried to begin; she tried to follow his finger, as she had followed
it already to the signatures and the dates. But her senses seemed to
share the confusion of her mind--the words mingled together, and the
lines swam before her eyes.

"I can't follow you," she said. "You must tell it, or read it to me."
She pushed her chair back from the table, and tried to collect herself.
"Stop!" she exclaimed, as the lawyer, with visible hesitation and
reluctance, took the papers in his own hand. "One question, first. Does
his will provide for his children?"

"His will provided for them, when he made it."

"When he made it!" (Something of her natural bluntness broke out in her
manner as she repeated the answer.) "Does it provide for them now?"

"It does not."

She snatched the will from his hand, and threw it into a corner of the
room. "You mean well," she said; "you wish to spare me--but you are
wasting your time, and my strength. If the will is useless, there let it
lie. Tell me the truth, Mr. Pendril--tell it plainly, tell it instantly,
in your own words!"

He felt that it would be useless cruelty to resist that appeal. There
was no merciful alternative but to answer it on the spot.

"I must refer you to the spring of the present year, Miss Garth. Do you
remember the fourth of March?"

Her attention wandered again; a thought seemed to have struck her at
the moment when he spoke. Instead of answering his inquiry, she put a
question of her own.

"Let me break the news to myself," she said--"let me anticipate you, if
I can. His useless will, the terms in which you speak of his daughters,
the doubt you