detected no other outward signs of what was passing within her.  As soon as she had done, she silently pushed the manuscript away, and put her hands on a sudden over her face.  When she withdrew them, all the four persons in the room noticed a change in her.  Something in her expression had altered, subtly and silently; something which made the familiar features suddenly look strange, even to her sister and Miss Garth; something, through all after years, never to be forgotten in connection with that day—­and never to be described.

The first words she spoke were addressed to Mr. Pendril.

“May I ask one more favor,” she said, “before you enter on your business arrangements?”

Mr. Pendril replied ceremoniously by a gesture of assent.  Magdalen’s resolution to possess herself of the Instructions did not appear to have produced a favorable impression on the lawyer’s mind.

“You mentioned what you were so kind as to do, in our interests, when you first wrote to Mr. Michael Vanstone,” she continued.  “You said you had told him all the circumstances.  I want—­if you will allow me—­to be made quite sure of what he really knew about us—­when he sent these orders to his lawyer.  Did he know that my father had made a will, and that he had left our fortunes to my sister and myself?”

“He did know it,” said Mr. Pendril.

“Did you tell him how it happened that we are left in this helpless position?”

“I told him that your father was entirely unaware, when he married, of the necessity for making another will.”

“And that another will would have been made, after he saw Mr. Clare, but for the dreadful misfortune of his death?”

“He knew that also.”

“Did he know that my father’s untiring goodness and kindness to both of us—­”

Her voice faltered for the first time:  she sighed, and put her hand to her head wearily.  Norah spoke entreatingly to her; Miss Garth spoke entreatingly to her; Mr. Clare sat silent, watching her more and more earnestly.  She answered her sister’s remonstrance with a faint smile.  “I will keep my promise,” she said; “I will distress nobody.”  With that reply, she turned again to Mr. Pendril; and steadily reiterated the question—­but in another form of words.

“Did Mr. Michael Vanstone know that my father’s great anxiety was to make sure of providing for my sister and myself?”

“He knew it in your father’s own words.  I sent him an extract from your father’s last letter to me.”

“The letter which asked you to come for God’s sake, and relieve him from the dreadful thought that his daughters were unprovided for?  The letter which said he should not rest in his grave if he left us disinherited?”

“That letter and those words.”

She paused, still keeping her eyes steadily fixed on the lawyer’s face.