After a delay which seemed interminable; after a weary scraping of wet feet on the hall mat; after a mysterious, muttered interchange of question and answer outside the door, the two came in—­Mr. Clare leading the way.  The old man walked straight up to the table, without any preliminary greeting, and looked across it at the three women, with a stern pity for them in his ragged, wrinkled face.

“Bad news,” he said.  “I am an enemy to all unnecessary suspense.  Plainness is kindness in such a case as this.  I mean to be kind—­and I tell you plainly—­bad news.”

Mr. Pendril followed him.  He shook hands, in silence, with Miss Garth and the two sisters, and took a seat near them.  Mr. Clare placed himself apart on a chair by the window.  The gray rainy light fell soft and sad on the faces of Norah and Magdalen, who sat together opposite to him.  Miss Garth had placed herself a little behind them, in partial shadow; and the lawyer’s quiet face was seen in profile, close beside her.  So the four occupants of the room appeared to Mr. Clare, as he sat apart in his corner; his long claw-like fingers interlaced on his knee; his dark vigilant eyes fixed searchingly now on one face, now on another.  The dripping rustle of the rain among the leaves, and the clear, ceaseless tick of the clock on the mantel-piece, made the minute of silence which followed the settling of the persons present in their places indescribably oppressive.  It was a relief to every one when Mr. Pendril spoke.

“Mr. Clare has told you already,” he began, “that I am the bearer of bad news.  I am grieved to say, Miss Garth, that your doubts, when I last saw you, were better founded than my hopes.  What that heartless elder brother was in his youth, he is still in his old age.  In all my unhappy experience of the worst side of human nature, I have never met with a man so utterly dead to every consideration of mercy as Michael Vanstone.”

“Do you mean that he takes the whole of his brother’s fortune, and makes no provision whatever for his brother’s children?” asked Miss Garth.

“He offers a sum of money for present emergencies,” replied Mr. Pendril, “so meanly and disgracefully insufficient that I am ashamed to mention it.”

“And nothing for the future?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

As that answer was given, the same thought passed, at the same moment, through Miss Garth’s mind and through Norah’s.  The decision, which deprived both the sisters alike of the resources of fortune, did not end there for the younger of the two.  Michael Vanstone’s merciless resolution had virtually pronounced the sentence which dismissed Frank to China, and which destroyed all present hope of Magdalen’s marriage.  As the words passed the lawyer’s lips, Miss Garth and Norah looked at Magdalen anxiously.  Her face turned a shade paler—­but not a feature of it moved; not a word escaped her.  Norah, who held her sister’s hand in her own, felt it tremble for a moment, and then turn cold—­and that was all.