olded it up again, in the shape in which it had been presented to her.
"I am much obliged to you, Mr. Pendril." With those words, she bowed,
and gently pushed the manuscript back across the table; then turned to
her sister.

"Norah," she said, "if we both of us live to grow old, and if you ever
forget all that we owe to Michael Vanstone--come to me, and I will
remind you."

She rose and walked across the room by herself to the window. As she
passed Mr. Clare, the old man stretched out his claw-like fingers and
caught her fast by the arm before she was aware of him.

"What is this mask of yours hiding?" he asked, forcing her to bend to
him, and looking close into her face. "Which of the extremes of human
temperature does your courage start from--the dead cold or the white
hot?"

She shrank back from him and turned away her head in silence. She would
have resented that unscrupulous intrusion on her own thoughts from any
man alive but Frank's father. He dropped her arm as suddenly as he had
taken it, and let her go on to the window. "No," he said to himself,
"not the cold extreme, whatever else it may be. So much the worse for
her, and for all belonging to her."

There was a momentary pause. Once more the dripping rustle of the rain
and the steady ticking of the clock filled up the gap of silence. Mr.
Pendril put the Instructions back in his pocket, considered a little,
and, turning toward Norah and Miss Garth, recalled their attention to
the present and pressing necessities of the time.

"Our consultation has been needlessly prolonged," he sail, "by painful
references to the past. We shall be better employed in settling our
arrangements for the future. I am obliged to return to town this
evening. Pray let me hear how I can best assist you; pray tell me what
trouble and what responsibility I can take off your hands."

For the moment, neither Norah nor Miss Garth seemed to be capable of
answering him. Magdalen's reception of the news which annihilated the
marriage prospect that her father's own lips had placed before her not
a month since, had bewildered and dismayed them alike. They had summoned
their courage to meet the shock of her passionate grief, or to face the
harder trial of witnessing her speechless despair. But they were not
prepared for her invincible resolution to read the Instructions; for the
terrible questions which she had put to the lawyer; for her immovable
determination to fix all the circumstance