Vanstone's memory--"
Miss Garth started back in her chair.
"What do you mean?" she asked, with a stern straightforwardness.
He took no heed of the question; he went on as if she had not
interrupted him.
"I have a second reason," he continued, "for showing you the will. If
I can prevail on you to read certain clauses in it, under my
superintendence, you will make your own discovery of the circumstances
which I am here to disclose--circumstances so painful that I hardly know
how to communicate them to you with my own lips."
Miss Garth looked him steadfastly in the face.
"Circumstances, sir, which affect the dead parents, or the living
children?"
"Which affect the dead and the living both," answered the lawyer.
"Circumstances, I grieve to say, which involve the future of Mr.
Vanstone's unhappy daughters."
"Wait," said Miss Garth, "wait a little." She pushed her gray hair back
from her temples, and struggled with the sickness of heart, the dreadful
faintness of terror, which would have overpowered a younger or a less
resolute woman. Her eyes, dim with watching, weary with grief, searched
the lawyer's unfathomable face. "His unhappy daughters?" she repeated
to herself, vacantly.
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