in the names of morality and religion.  But it has no extraordinary oppression to answer for in the case of these unhappy girls.  The more merciful and Christian law of other countries, which allows the marriage of the parents to make the children legitimate, has no mercy on these children.  The accident of their father having been married, when he first met with their mother, has made them the outcasts of the whole social community; it has placed them out of the pale of the Civil Law of Europe.  I tell you the hard truth—­it is useless to disguise it.  There is no hope, if we look back at the past:  there may be hope, if we look on to the future.  The best service which I can now render you is to shorten the period of your suspense.  In less than an hour I shall be on my way back to London.  Immediately on my arrival, I will ascertain the speediest means of communicating with Mr. Michael Vanstone; and will let you know the result.  Sad as the position of the two sisters now is, we must look at it on its best side; we must not lose hope.”

“Hope?” repeated Miss Garth.  “Hope from Michael Vanstone!”

“Yes; hope from the influence on him of time, if not from the influence of mercy.  As I have already told you, he is now an old man; he cannot, in the course of nature, expect to live much longer.  If he looks back to the period when he and his brother were first at variance, he must look back through thirty years.  Surely, these are softening influences which must affect any man?  Surely, his own knowledge of the shocking circumstances under which he has become possessed of this money will plead with him, if nothing else does?”

“I will try to think as you do, Mr. Pendril—­I will try to hope for the best.  Shall we be left long in suspense before the decision reaches us?”

“I trust not.  The only delay on my side will be caused by the necessity of discovering the place of Michael Vanstone’s residence on the Continent.  I think I have the means of meeting this difficulty successfully; and the moment I reach London, those means shall be tried.”

He took up his hat; and then returned to the table on which the father’s last letter, and the father’s useless will, were lying side by side.  After a moment’s consideration, he placed them both in Miss Garth’s hands.

“It may help you in breaking the hard truth to the orphan sisters,” he said, in his quiet, self-repressed way, “if they can see how their father refers to them in his will—­if they ca n read his letter to me, the last he ever wrote.  Let these tokens tell them that the one idea of their father’s life was the idea of making atonement to his children.  ‘They may think bitterly of their birth,’ he said to me, at the time when I drew this useless will; ’but they shall never think bitterly of me.  I will cross them in nothing:  they shall never know a sorrow that I can spare them, or a want which I will not satisfy.’  He made me put those words in his will, to plead for him when the truth which he had concealed from his children in his lifetime was revealed to them after his death.  No law can deprive his daughters of the legacy of his repentance and his love.  I leave the will and the letter to help you:  I give them both into your care.”