After a little trifling with her dress, she took from her bosom the white silk bag which her own hands had made on the farewell night at Combe-Raven.  It drew together at the mouth with delicate silken strings.  The first thing she took out, on opening it, was a lock of Frank’s hair, tied with a morsel of silver thread; the next was a sheet of paper containing the extracts which she had copied from her father’s will and her father’s letter; the last was a closely-folded packet of bank-notes, to the value of nearly two hundred pounds—­the produce (as Miss Garth had rightly conjectured) of the sale of her jewelry and her dresses, in which the servant at the boarding-school had privately assisted her.  She put back the notes at once, without a second glance at them, and then sat looking thoughtfully at the lock of hair as it lay on her lap.  “You are better than nothing,” she said, speaking to it with a girl’s fanciful tenderness.  “I can sit and look at you sometimes, till I almost think I am looking at Frank.  Oh, my darling! my darling!” Her voice faltered softly, and she put the lock of hair, with a languid gentleness, to her lips.  It fell from her fingers into her bosom.  A lovely tinge of color rose on her cheeks, and spread downward to her neck, as if it followed the falling hair.  She closed her eyes, and let her fair head droop softly.  The world passed from her; and, for one enchanted moment, Love opened the gates of Paradise to the daughter of Eve.

The trivial noises in the neighboring street, gathering in number as the morning advanced, forced her back to the hard realities of the passing time.  She raised her head with a heavy sigh, and opened her eyes once more on the mean and miserable little room.

The extracts from the will and the letter—­those last memorials of her father, now so closely associated with the purpose which had possession of her mind—­still lay before her.  The transient color faded from her face, as she spread the little manuscript open on her lap.  The extracts from the will stood highest on the page; they were limited to those few touching words in which the dead father begged his children’s forgiveness for the stain on their birth, and implored them to remember the untiring love and care by which he had striven to atone for it.  The extract from the letter to Mr. Pendril came next.  She read the last melancholy sentences aloud to herself:  “For God’s sake come on the day when you receive this—­come and relieve me from the dreadful thought that my two darling girls are at this moment unprovided for.  If anything happened to me, and if my desire to do their mother justice ended (through my miserable ignorance of the law) in leaving Norah and Magdalen disinherited, I should not rest in my grave!” Under these lines again, and close at the bottom of the page, was written the terrible commentary on that letter which had fallen from Mr. Pendril’s lips:  “Mr. Vanstone’s daughters are Nobody’s Children, and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle’s mercy.”