tenderness. "I can sit and look at you sometimes, till I almost
think I am looking at Frank. Oh, my darling! my darling!" Her
voice faltered softly, and she put the lock of hair, with a languid
gentleness, to her lips. It fell from her fingers into her bosom. A
lovely tinge of color rose on her cheeks, and spread downward to her
neck, as if it followed the falling hair. She closed her eyes, and let
her fair head droop softly. The world passed from her; and, for one
enchanted moment, Love opened the gates of Paradise to the daughter of
Eve.

The trivial noises in the neighboring street, gathering in number as the
morning advanced, forced her back to the hard realities of the passing
time. She raised her head with a heavy sigh, and opened her eyes once
more on the mean and miserable little room.

The extracts from the will and the letter--those last memorials of her
father, now so closely associated with the purpose which had possession
of her mind--still lay before her. The transient color faded from her
face, as she spread the little manuscript open on her lap. The extracts
from the will stood highest on the page; they were limited to those
few touching words in which the dead father begged his children's
forgiveness for the stain on their birth, and implored them to remember
the untiring love and care by which he had striven to atone for it.
The extract from the letter to Mr. Pendril came next. She read the last
melancholy sentences aloud to herself: "For God's sake come on the day
when you receive this--come and relieve me from the dreadful thought
that my two darling girls are at this moment unprovided for. If anything
happened to me, and if my desire to do their mother justice ended
(through my miserable ignorance of the law) in leaving Norah and
Magdalen disinherited, I should not rest in my grave!" Under these lines
again, and close at the bottom of the page, was written the terrible
commentary on that letter which had fallen from Mr. Pendril's lips:
"Mr. Vanstone's daughters are Nobody's Children, and the law leaves them
helpless at their uncle's mercy."

Helpless when those words were spoken--helpless still, after all that
she had resolved, after all that she had sacrificed. The assertion of
her natural rights and her sister's, sanctioned by the direct expression
of her father's last wishes; the recall of Frank from China; the
justification of her desertion of Norah--all hung on her desperate
purpose of recov