After a moment's consideration, he placed them both in Miss Garth's
hands.
"It may help you in breaking the hard truth to the orphan sisters,"
he said, in his quiet, self-repressed way, "if they can see how their
father refers to them in his will--if they ca n read his letter to me,
the last he ever wrote. Let these tokens tell them that the one idea of
their father's life was the idea of making atonement to his children.
'They may think bitterly of their birth,' he said to me, at the time
when I drew this useless will; 'but they shall never think bitterly of
me. I will cross them in nothing: they shall never know a sorrow that
I can spare them, or a want which I will not satisfy.' He made me put
those words in his will, to plead for him when the truth which he had
concealed from his children in his lifetime was revealed to them
after his death. No law can deprive his daughters of the legacy of his
repentance and his love. I leave the will and the letter to help you: I
give them both into your care."
He saw how his parting kindness touched her and thoughtfully hastened
the farewell. She took his hand in both her own and murmured a few
broken words of gratitude.
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