Let us wait a little, until you recover yourself."
They waited a few minutes. The lawyer took some letters from his pocket,
referred to them attentively, and put them back again. "Can you listen
to me, now?" he asked, kindly. She bowed her head in answer. Mr. Pendril
considered with himself for a moment, "I must caution you on one point,"
he said. "If the aspect of Mr. Vanstone's character which I am now about
to present to you seems in some respects at variance with your later
experience, bear in mind that, when you first knew him twelve years
since, he was a man of forty; and that, when I first knew him, he was a
lad of nineteen."
His next words raised the veil, and showed the irrevocable Past.
CHAPTER XIII.
"THE fortune which Mr. Vanstone possessed when you knew him" (the lawyer
began) "was part, and part only, of the inheritance which fell to him
on his father's death. Mr. Vanstone the elder was a manufacturer in
the North of England. He married early in life; and the children of the
marriage were either six or seven in number--I am not certain which.
First, Michael, the eldest son, still living, and now an old man
turned seventy.
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