“His will provided for them, when he made it.”

“When he made it!” (Something of her natural bluntness broke out in her manner as she repeated the answer.) “Does it provide for them now?”

“It does not.”

She snatched the will from his hand, and threw it into a corner of the room.  “You mean well,” she said; “you wish to spare me—­but you are wasting your time, and my strength.  If the will is useless, there let it lie.  Tell me the truth, Mr. Pendril—­tell it plainly, tell it instantly, in your own words!”

He felt that it would be useless cruelty to resist that appeal.  There was no merciful alternative but to answer it on the spot.

“I must refer you to the spring of the present year, Miss Garth.  Do you remember the fourth of March?”

Her attention wandered again; a thought seemed to have struck her at the moment when he spoke.  Instead of answering his inquiry, she put a question of her own.

“Let me break the news to myself,” she said—­“let me anticipate you, if I can.  His useless will, the terms in which you speak of his daughters, the doubt you seem to feel of my continued respect for his memory, have opened a new view to me.  Mr. Vanstone has died a ruined man—­is that what you had to tell me?”

“Far from it.  Mr. Vanstone has died, leaving a fortune of more than eighty thousand pounds—­a fortune invested in excellent securities.  He lived up to his income, but never beyond it; and all his debts added together would not reach two hundred pounds.  If he had died a ruined man, I should have felt deeply for his children:  but I should not have hesitated to tell you the truth, as I am hesitating now.  Let me repeat a question which escaped you, I think, when I first put it.  Carry your mind back to the spring of this year.  Do you remember the fourth of March?”

Miss Garth shook her head.  “My memory for dates is bad at the best of times,” she said.  “I am too confused to exert it at a moment’s notice.  Can you put your question in no other form?”

He put it in this form: 

“Do you remember any domestic event in the spring of the present year which appeared to affect Mr. Vanstone more seriously than usual?”

Miss Garth leaned forward in her chair, and looked eagerly at Mr. Pendril across the table.  “The journey to London!” she exclaimed.  “I distrusted the journey to London from the first!  Yes!  I remember Mr. Vanstone receiving a letter—­I remember his reading it, and looking so altered from himself that he startled us all.”

“Did you notice any apparent understanding between Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone on the subject of that letter?”