e more or
less unreasonable. Count Fosco, though not a rich man, was not a
penniless adventurer either. He had a small but sufficient income of
his own. He had lived many years in England, and he held an excellent
position in society. These recommendations, however, availed nothing
with Mr. Fairlie. In many of his opinions he was an Englishman of the
old school, and he hated a foreigner simply and solely because he was a
foreigner. The utmost that he could be prevailed on to do, in after
years--mainly at Miss Fairlie's intercession--was to restore his
sister's name to its former place in his will, but to keep her waiting
for her legacy by giving the income of the money to his daughter for
life, and the money itself, if her aunt died before her, to her cousin
Magdalen. Considering the relative ages of the two ladies, the aunt's
chance, in the ordinary course of nature, of receiving the ten thousand
pounds, was thus rendered doubtful in the extreme; and Madame Fosco
resented her brother's treatment of her as unjustly as usual in such
cases, by refusing to see her niece, and declining to believe that Miss
Fairlie's intercession had ever been exerted to restore her name to Mr.
Fairlie's will.

Such was the history of the ten thousand pounds. Here again no
difficulty could arise with Sir Percival's legal adviser. The income
would be at the wife's disposal, and the principal would go to her aunt
or her cousin on her death.

All preliminary explanations being now cleared out of the way, I come
at last to the real knot of the case--to the twenty thousand pounds.

This sum was absolutely Miss Fairlie's own on her completing her
twenty-first year, and the whole future disposition of it depended, in
the first instance, on the conditions I could obtain for her in her
marriage-settlement. The other clauses contained in that document were
of a formal kind, and need not be recited here. But the clause
relating to the money is too important to be passed over. A few lines
will be sufficient to give the necessary abstract of it.

My stipulation in regard to the twenty thousand pounds was simply this:
The whole amount was to be settled so as to give the income to the lady
for her life--afterwards to Sir Percival for his life--and the
principal to the children of the marriage. In default of issue, the
principal was to be disposed of as the lady might by her will direct,
for which purpose I reserved to her the right of makin