him back, and if the security offered was
good, and if my lawyer thought me justified--"

"Stop, Mr. Vanstone," said Magdalen. "You are entirely mistaken in your
estimate of the person you have to deal with. You are seriously wrong
in supposing that the marriage of the younger sister--if she could be
married in a week's time--would make any difference in the convictions
which induced her to write to your father and to you. I don't deny that
she may act from a mixture of motives. I don't deny that she clings
to the hope of hastening her marriage, and to the hope of rescuing
her sister from a life of dependence. But if both those objects were
accomplished by other means, nothing would induce her to leave you in
possession of the inheritance which her father meant his children to
have. I know her, Mr. Vanstone! She is a nameless, homeless, friendless
wretch. The law which takes care of you, the law which takes care of
all legitimate children, casts her like carrion to the winds. It is your
law--not hers. She only knows it as the instrument of a vile oppression,
an insufferable wrong. The sense of that wrong haunts her like a
possession of the devil. The resolution to right that wrong burns in her
like fire. If that miserable girl was married and rich, with millions
tomorrow, do you think she would move an inch from her purpose? I tell
you she would resist, to the last breath in her body, the vile injustice
which has struck at the helpless children, through the calamity of
their father's death! I tell you she would shrink from no means which a
desperate woman can employ to force that closed hand of yours open, or
die in the attempt!"

She stopped abruptly. Once more her own indomitable earnestness had
betrayed her. Once more the inborn nobility of that perverted nature had
risen superior to the deception which it had stooped to practice. The
scheme of the moment vanished from her mind's view; and the resolution
of her life burst its way outward in her own words, in her own tones,
pouring hotly and more hotly from her heart. She saw the abject manikin
before her cowering, silent, in his chair. Had his fears left him sense
enough to perceive the change in her voice? No: _his_ face spoke the
truth--his fears had bewildered him. This time the chance of the moment
had befriended her. The door behind her chair had not opened again
yet. "No ears but his have heard me," she thought, with a sense of
unutterable relief. "I have esc