"

"I shall help you to believe it when I tell you more," said Mr.
Pendril--"you will understand me better when I take you back to the time
of Mr. Vanstone's early life. I won't ask for your attention just yet.
Let us wait a little, until you recover yourself."

They waited a few minutes. The lawyer took some letters from his pocket,
referred to them attentively, and put them back again. "Can you listen
to me, now?" he asked, kindly. She bowed her head in answer. Mr. Pendril
considered with himself for a moment, "I must caution you on one point,"
he said. "If the aspect of Mr. Vanstone's character which I am now about
to present to you seems in some respects at variance with your later
experience, bear in mind that, when you first knew him twelve years
since, he was a man of forty; and that, when I first knew him, he was a
lad of nineteen."

His next words raised the veil, and showed the irrevocable Past.

CHAPTER XIII.

"THE fortune which Mr. Vanstone possessed when you knew him" (the lawyer
began) "was part, and part only, of the inheritance which fell to him
on his father's death. Mr. Vanstone the elder was a manufacturer in
the North of England. He married early in life; and the children of the
marriage were either six or seven in number--I am not certain which.
First, Michael, the eldest son, still living, and now an old man
turned seventy. Secondly, Selina, the eldest daughter, who married in
after-life, and who died ten or eleven years ago. After those two came
other sons and daughters, whose early deaths make it unnecessary to
mention them particularly. The last and by many years the youngest of
the children was Andrew, whom I first knew, as I told you, at the age
of nineteen. My father was then on the point of retiring from the active
pursuit of his profession; and in succeeding to his business, I also
succeeded to his connection with the Vanstones as the family solicitor.

"At that time, Andrew had just started in life by entering the army.
After little more than a year of home-service, he was ordered out with
his regiment to Canada. When he quitted England, he left his father and
his elder brother Michael seriously at variance. I need not detain you
by entering into the cause of the quarrel. I need only tell you that the
elder Mr. Vanstone, with many excellent qualities, was a man of fierce
and intractable temper. His eldest son had set him at defiance, under
circumstances which might have justly ir