“Through the misfortunes which have followed the marriage of their parents.”

With that startling answer he rose, took up the will from the floor, and restored it to its former position on the table between them.

“I can only place the truth before you,” he resumed, “in one plain form of words.  The marriage has destroyed this will, and has left Mr. Vanstone’s daughters dependent on their uncle.”

As he spoke, the breeze stirred again among the shrubs under the window.

“On their uncle?” repeated Miss Garth.  She considered for a moment, and laid her hand suddenly on Mr. Pendril’s arm.  “Not on Michael Vanstone!”

“Yes:  on Michael Vanstone.”

Miss Garth’s hand still mechanically grasped the lawyer’s arm.  Her whole mind was absorbed in the effort to realize the discovery which had now burst on her.

“Dependent on Michael Vanstone!” she said to herself.  “Dependent on their father’s bitterest enemy?  How can it be?”

“Give me your attention for a few minutes more,” said Mr. Pendril, “and you shall hear.  The sooner we can bring this painful interview to a close, the sooner I can open communications with Mr. Michael Vanstone, and the sooner you will know what he decides on doing for his brother’s orphan daughters.  I repeat to you that they are absolutely dependent on him.  You will most readily understand how and why, if we take up the chain of events where we last left it—­at the period of Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone’s marriage.”

“One moment, sir,” said Miss Garth.  “Were you in the secret of that marriage at the time when it took place?”

“Unhappily, I was not.  I was away from London—­away from England at the time.  If Mr. Vanstone had been able to communicate with me when the letter from America announced the death of his wife, the fortunes of his daughters would not have been now at stake.”

He paused, and, before proceeding further, looked once more at the letters which he had consulted at an earlier period of the interview.  He took one letter from the rest, and put it on the table by his side.

“At the beginning of the present year,” he resumed, “a very serious business necessity, in connection with some West Indian property possessed by an old client and friend of mine, required the presence either of myself, or of one of my two partners, in Jamaica.  One of the two could not be spared; the other was not in health to undertake the voyage.  There was no choice left but for me to go.  I wrote to Mr. Vanstone, telling him that I should leave England at the end of February, and that the nature of the business which took me away afforded little hope of my getting back from the West Indies before June.  My letter was not written with any special motive.  I merely thought it right—­seeing that my partners were not admitted to my knowledge of Mr. Vanstone’s private affairs—­to warn him of my absence, as a measure of formal precaution which it was right to take.  At the end of February I left England, without having heard from him.  I was on the sea when the news of his wife’s death reached him, on the fourth of March:  and I did not return until the middle of last June.”