Magdalen took it from
her mechanically. "You!" she said, looking at her sister with the
remembrance of all that she had vainly ventured, of all that she had
vainly suffered, at St. Crux--"_you_ have found it!"
"Yes," said Norah, gayly; "the Trust has proved no exception to the
general perversity of all lost things. Look for them, and they remain
invisible. Leave them alone, and they reveal themselves! You and your
lawyer, Magdalen, were both justified in supposing that your interest
in this discovery was an interest of no common kind. I spare you all our
consultations after I had produced the crumpled paper from the ashes. It
ended in George's lawyer being written to, and in George himself being
recalled from the Continent. Miss Garth and I both saw him immediately
on his return. He did what neither of us could do--he solved the mystery
of the Trust being hidden in the charcoal ashes. Admiral Bartram, you
must know, was all his life subject to fits of somnambulism. He had been
found walking in his sleep not long before his death--just at the time,
too, when he was sadly troubled in his mind on the subject of that very
letter in your hand. George's idea is that he must have fancied he was
doing in his sleep what he would have died rather than do in his waking
moments--destroying the Trust.
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