dence on the
Continent. I think I have the means of meeting this difficulty
successfully; and the moment I reach London, those means shall be
tried."

He took up his hat; and then returned to the table on which the father's
last letter, and the father's useless will, were lying side by side.
After a moment's consideration, he placed them both in Miss Garth's
hands.

"It may help you in breaking the hard truth to the orphan sisters,"
he said, in his quiet, self-repressed way, "if they can see how their
father refers to them in his will--if they ca n read his letter to me,
the last he ever wrote. Let these tokens tell them that the one idea of
their father's life was the idea of making atonement to his children.
'They may think bitterly of their birth,' he said to me, at the time
when I drew this useless will; 'but they shall never think bitterly of
me. I will cross them in nothing: they shall never know a sorrow that
I can spare them, or a want which I will not satisfy.' He made me put
those words in his will, to plead for him when the truth which he had
concealed from his children in his lifetime was revealed to them
after his death. No law can deprive his daughters of the legacy of his
repentance and his love. I leave the will and the letter to help you: I
give them both into your care."

He saw how his parting kindness touched her and thoughtfully hastened
the farewell. She took his hand in both her own and murmured a few
broken words of gratitude. "Trust me to do my best," he said--and,
turning away with a merciful abruptness, left her. In the broad,
cheerful sunshine he had come in to reveal the fatal truth. In the
broad, cheerful sunshine--that truth disclosed--he went out.

CHAPTER XIV.

IT was nearly an hour past noon when Mr. Pendril left the house. Miss
Garth sat down again at the table alone, and tried to face the necessity
which the event of the morning now forced on her.

Her mind was not equal to the effort. She tried to lessen the strain on
it--to lose the sense of her own position--to escape from her thoughts
for a few minutes only. After a little, she opened Mr. Vanstone's
letter, and mechanically set herself to read it through once more.

One by one, the last words of the dead man fastened themselves more
and more firmly on her attention. The unrelieved solitude, the unbroken
silence, helped their influence on her mind and opened it to those very
impressions of past and present which she wa