“‘I shall sleep when we have left Combe-Raven,’ she said.  ’I shall be better when it is all over, and I have bid Frank good-by.’  She had in her hand our father’s will, and the letter he wrote to you; and when she had done speaking, she gave them into my possession.  I was the eldest (she said), and those last precious relics ought to be in my keeping.  I tried to propose to her that we should divide them; but she shook her head.  ‘I have copied for myself,’ was her answer, ’all that he says of us in the will, and all that he says in the letter.’  She told me this, and took from her bosom a tiny white silk bag, which she had made in the night, and in which she had put the extracts, so as to keep them always about her.  ’This tells me in his own words what his last wishes were for both of us,’ she said; ‘and this is all I want for the future.’

“These are trifles to dwell on; and I am almost surprised at myself for not feeling ashamed to trouble you with them.  But, since I have known what your early connection was with my father and mother, I have learned to think of you (and, I suppose, to write to you) as an old friend.  And, besides, I have it so much at heart to change your opinion of Magdalen, that I can’t help telling you the smallest things about her which may, in my judgment, end in making you think of her as I do.

“When breakfast-time came (on Thursday morning), we were surprised to find a strange letter on the table.  Perhaps I ought to mention it to you, in case of any future necessity for your interference.  It was addressed to Miss Garth, on paper with the deepest mourning-border round it; and the writer was the same man who followed us on our way home from a walk one day last spring—­Captain Wragge.  His object appears to be to assert once more his audacious claim to a family connection with my poor mother, under cover of a letter of condolence; which it is an insolence in such a person to have written at all.  He expresses as much sympathy—­on his discovery of our affliction in the newspaper—­as if he had been really intimate with us; and he begs to know, in a postscript (being evidently in total ignorance of all that has really happened), whether it is thought desirable that he should be present, among the other relatives, at the reading of the will!  The address he gives, at which letters will reach him for the next fortnight, is, ’Post-office, Birmingham.’  This is all I have to tell you on the subject.  Both the letter and the writer seem to me to be equally unworthy of the slightest notice, on our part or on yours.

“After breakfast Magdalen left us, and went by herself into the morning-room.  The weather being still showery, we had arranged that Francis Clare should see her in that room, when he presented himself to take his leave.  I was upstairs when he came; and I remained upstairs for more than half an hour afterward, sadly anxious, as you may well believe, on Magdalen’s account.