id, looking toward the shrubbery, as he
joined Mr. Clare.

"My appointment with Miss Garth is for eleven o'clock: it only wants ten
minutes of the hour."

"Are you to see her alone?" asked Mr. Clare.

"I left Miss Garth to decide--after warning her, first of all, that the
circumstances I am compelled to disclose are of a very serious nature."

"And _has_ she decided?"

"She writes me word that she mentioned my appointment, and repeated
the warning I had given her to both the daughters. The elder of the two
shrinks--and who can wonder at it?--from any discussion connected with
the future which requires her presence so soon as the day after the
funeral. The younger one appears to have expressed no opinion on the
subject. As I understand it, she suffers herself to be passively guided
by her sister's example. My interview, therefore, will take place with
Miss Garth alone--and it is a very great relief to me to know it."

He spoke the last words with more emphasis and energy than seemed
habitual to him. Mr. Clare stopped, and looked at his guest attentively.

"You are almost as old as I am, sir," he said. "Has all your long
experience as a lawyer not hardened you yet?"

"I never knew how little it had hardened me," replied Mr. Pendril,
quietly, "until I returned from London yesterday to attend the funeral.
I was not warned that the daughters had resolved on following their
parents to the grave. I think their presence made the closing scene of
this dreadful calamity doubly painful, and doubly touching. You saw
how the great concourse of people were moved by it--and _they_ were in
ignorance of the truth; _they_ knew nothing of the cruel necessity which
takes me to the house this morning. The sense of that necessity--and the
sight of those poor girls at the time when I felt my hard duty toward
them most painfully--shook me, as a man of my years and my way of life
is not often shaken by any distress in the present or any suspense in
the future. I have not recovered it this morning: I hardly feel sure of
myself yet."

"A man's composure--when he is a man like you--comes with the necessity
for it," said Mr. Clare. "You must have had duties to perform as trying
in their way as the duty that lies before you this morning."

Mr. Pendril shook his head. "Many duties as serious; many stories more
romantic. No duty so trying, no story so hopeless, as this."

With those words they parted. Mr. Pendril left the garden for the
s