ns into the
proper legal form. Before Sir John had been a fortnight in his grave,
the future of his daughter had been most wisely and most affectionately
provided for.

The Will remained in its fireproof box at my office, through more years
than I Like to reckon up. It was not till the summer of eighteen hundred
and forty-eight that I found occasion to look at it again under very
melancholy circumstances.

At the date I have mentioned, the doctors pronounced the sentence on
poor Lady Verinder, which was literally a sentence of death. I was the
first person whom she informed of her situation; and I found her anxious
to go over her Will again with me.

It was impossible to improve the provisions relating to her daughter.
But, in the lapse of time, her wishes in regard to certain minor
legacies, left to different relatives, had undergone some modification;
and it became necessary to add three or four Codicils to the original
document. Having done this at once, for fear of accident, I obtained
her ladyship's permission to embody her recent instructions in a
second Will. My object was to avoid certain inevitable confusions and
repetitions which now disfigured the original document, and which, to
own the truth, grated sadly on my professional sense of the fitness of
things.

The execution of this second Will has been described by Miss Clack, who
was so obliging as to witness it. So far as regarded Rachel Verinder's
pecuniary interests, it was, word for word, the exact counterpart of the
first Will. The only changes introduced related to the appointment of a
guardian, and to certain provisions concerning that appointment, which
were made under my advice. On Lady Verinder's death, the Will was placed
in the hands of my proctor to be "proved" (as the phrase is) in the
usual way.

In about three weeks from that time--as well as I can remember--the
first warning reached me of something unusual going on under the
surface. I happened to be looking in at my friend the proctor's office,
and I observed that he received me with an appearance of greater
interest than usual.

"I have some news for you," he said. "What do you think I heard at
Doctors' Commons this morning? Lady Verinder's Will has been asked for,
and examined, already!"

This was news indeed! There was absolutely nothing which could be
contested in the Will; and there was nobody I could think of who had
the slightest interest in examining it. (I shall perhaps do