she inquired. Mr. Pendril bowed; and Magdalen smoothed out
the manuscript before her on the table.

"Will you decide, Norah?" she asked, turning to her sister. "Shall I
read this aloud, or shall I read it to myself?"

"To yourself," said Miss Garth; answering for Norah, who looked at her
in mute perplexity and distress.

"It shall be as you wish," said Magdalen. With that reply, she turned
again to the manuscript and read these lines:

".... You are now in possession of my wishes in relation to the
property in money, and to the sale of the furniture, carriages, horses,
and so forth. The last point left on which it is necessary for me to
instruct you refers to the persons inhabiting the house, and to certain
preposterous claims on their behalf set up by a solicitor named Pendril;
who has, no doubt, interested reasons of his own for making application
to me.

"I understand that my late brother has left two illegitimate children;
both of them young women, who are of an age to earn their own
livelihood. Various considerations, all equally irregular, have been
urged in respect to these persons by the solicitor representing them. Be
so good as to tell him that neither you nor I have anything to do with
questions of mere sentiment; and then state plainly, for his better
information, what the motives are which regulate my conduct, and what
the provision is which I feel myself justified in making for the two
young women. Your instructions on both these points you will find
detailed in the next paragraph.

"I wish the persons concerned to know, once for all, how I regard
the circumstances which have placed my late brother's property at my
disposal. Let them understand that I consider those circumstances to be
a Providential interposition which has restored to me the inheritance
that ought always to have been mine. I receive the money, not only as
my right, but also as a proper compensation for the injustice which I
suffered from my father, and a proper penalty paid by my younger brother
for the vile intrigue by which he succeeded in disinheriting me. His
conduct, when a young man, was uniformly discreditable in all the
relations of life; and what it then was it continued to be (on the
showing of his own legal representative) after the time when I ceased
to hold any communication with him. He appears to have systematically
imposed a woman on Society as his wife who was not his wife, and to
have completed the outrage on m