They bowed to each other with a formal politeness, which betrayed on either side an uneasy sense of restraint.  Mr. Pendril was one of the many men who appear superficially to the worst advantage, under the influence of strong mental agitation which it is necessary for them to control.  Miss Garth, on her side, had not forgotten the ungraciously guarded terms in which the lawyer had replied to her letter; and the natural anxiety which she had felt on the subject of the interview was not relieved by any favorable opinion of the man who sought it.  As they confronted each other in the silence of the summer’s morning—­both dressed in black; Miss Garth’s hard features, gaunt and haggard with grief; the lawyer’s cold, colorless face, void of all marked expression, suggestive of a business embarrassment and of nothing more—­it would have been hard to find two persons less attractive externally to any ordinary sympathies than the two who had now met together, the one to tell, the other to hear, the secrets of the dead.

“I am sincerely sorry, Miss Garth, to intrude on you at such a time as this.  But circumstances, as I have already explained, leave me no other choice.”

“Will you take a seat, Mr. Pendril?  You wished to see me in this room, I believe?”

“Only in this room, because Mr. Vanstone’s papers are kept here, and I may find it necessary to refer to some of them.”

After that formal interchange of question and answer, they sat down on either side of a table placed close under the window.  One waited to speak, the other waited to bear.  There was a momentary silence.  Mr. Pendril broke it by referring to the young ladies, with the customary expressions of sympathy.  Miss Garth answered him with the same ceremony, in the same conventional tone.  There was a second pause of silence.  The humming of flies among the evergreen shrubs under the window penetrated drowsily into the room; and the tramp of a heavy-footed cart-horse, plodding along the high-road beyond the garden, was as plainly audible in the stillness as if it had been night.

The lawyer roused his flagging resolution, and spoke to the purpose when he spoke next.

“You have some reason, Miss Garth,” he began, “to feel not quite satisfied with my past conduct toward you, in one particular.  During Mrs. Vanstone’s fatal illness, you addressed a letter to me, making certain inquiries; which, while she lived, it was impossible for me to answer.  Her deplorable death releases me from the restraint which I had imposed on myself, and permits—­or, more properly, obliges me to speak.  You shall know what serious reasons I had for waiting day and night in the hope of obtaining that interview which unhappily never took place; and in justice to Mr. Vanstone’s memory, your own eyes shall inform you that he made his will.”