For the moment, neither Norah nor Miss Garth seemed to be capable of answering him.  Magdalen’s reception of the news which annihilated the marriage prospect that her father’s own lips had placed before her not a month since, had bewildered and dismayed them alike.  They had summoned their courage to meet the shock of her passionate grief, or to face the harder trial of witnessing her speechless despair.  But they were not prepared for her invincible resolution to read the Instructions; for the terrible questions which she had put to the lawyer; for her immovable determination to fix all the circumstances in her mind, under which Michael Vanstone’s decision had been pronounced.  There she stood at the window, an unfathomable mystery to the sister who had never been parted from her, to the governess who had trained her from a child.  Miss Garth remembered the dark doubts which had crossed her mind on the day when she and Magdalen had met in the garden.  Norah looked forward to the coming time, with the first serious dread of it on her sister’s account which she had felt yet.  Both had hitherto remained passive, in despair of knowing what to do.  Both were now silent, in despair of knowing what to say.

Mr. Pendril patiently and kindly helped them, by returning to the subject of their future plans for the second time.

“I am sorry to press any business matters on your attention,” he said, “when you are necessarily unfitted to deal with them.  But I must take my instructions back to London with me to night.  With reference, in the first place, to the disgraceful pecuniary offer, to which I have already alluded.  The younger Miss Vanstone having read the Instructions, needs no further information from my lips.  The elder will, I hope, excuse me if I tell her (what I should be ashamed to tell her, but that it is a matter of necessity), that Mr. Michael Vanstone’s provision for his brother’s children begins and ends with an offer to each of them of one hundred pounds.”

Norah’s face crimsoned with indignation.  She started to her feet, as if Michael Vanstone had been present in the room, and had personally insulted her.

“I see,” said the lawyer, wishing to spare her; “I may tell Mr. Michael Vanstone you refuse the money.”

“Tell him,” she broke out passionately, “if I was starving by the roadside, I wouldn’t touch a farthing of it!”

“Shall I notify your refusal also?” asked Mr. Pendril, speaking to Magdalen next.

She turned round from the window—­but kept her face in shadow, by standing close against it with her back to the light.

“Tell him, on my part,” she said, “to think again before he starts me in life with a hundred pounds.  I will give him time to think.”  She spoke those strange words with a marked emphasis; and turning back quickly to the window, hid her face from the observation of every one in the room.