“You warned him of your departure,” interposed Miss Garth.  “Did you not warn him of your return?”

“Not personally.  My head-clerk sent him one of the circulars which were dispatched from my office, in various directions, to announce my return.  It was the first substitute I thought of for the personal letter which the pressure of innumerable occupations, all crowding on me together after my long absence, did not allow me leisure to write.  Barely a month later, the first information of his marriage reached me in a letter from himself, written on the day of the fatal accident.  The circumstances which induced him to write arose out of an event in which you must have taken some interest—­I mean the attachment between Mr. Clare’s son and Mr. Vanstone’s youngest daughter.”

“I cannot say that I was favorably disposed toward that attachment at the time,” replied Miss Garth.  “I was ignorant then of the family secret:  I know better now.”

“Exactly.  The motive which you can now appreciate is the motive that leads us to the point.  The young lady herself (as I have heard from the elder Mr. Clare, to whom I am indebted for my knowledge of the circumstances in detail) confessed her attachment to her father, and innocently touched him to the quick by a chance reference to his own early life.  He had a long conversation with Mrs. Vanstone, at which they both agreed that Mr. Clare must be privately informed of the truth, before the attachment between the two young people was allowed to proceed further.  It was painful in the last degree, both to husband and wife, to be reduced to this alternative.  But they were resolute, honorably resolute, in making the sacrifice of their own feelings; and Mr. Vanstone betook himself on the spot to Mr. Clare’s cottage.—­You no doubt observed a remarkable change in Mr. Vanstone’s manner on that day; and you can now account for it?”

Miss Garth bowed her head, and Mr. Pendril went on.

“You are sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Clare’s contempt for all social prejudices,” he continued, “to anticipate his reception of the confession which his neighbor addressed to him.  Five minutes after the interview had begun, the two old friends were as easy and unrestrained together as usual.  In the course of conversation, Mr. Vanstone mentioned the pecuniary arrangement which he had made for the benefit of his daughter and of her future husband—­and, in doing so, he naturally referred to his will here, on the table between us.  Mr. Clare, remembering that his friend had been married in the March of that year, at once asked when the will had been executed:  receiving the reply that it had been made five years since; and, thereupon, astounded Mr. Vanstone by telling him bluntly that the document was waste paper in the eye of the law.  Up to that moment he, like many other persons, had been absolutely ignorant that a man’s marriage is, legally as well as socially, considered to be the most important event in his life;