When they went to kiss their mother good night they saw that she knew.  The girls exclaimed at once at sight of her face.

“You are ill,” cried Eva.

“No, Eva,” rejoined Mrs. Pell, “it is worse than illness.”

The tears welled up in her eyes.  She could say no more.

Sydney was not with her, neither was he in his room.  The girls were clamorous to know what was the matter.

“Tell them, Roy, I can’t,” Mrs. Pell at last found voice to say.

Rex could not stay to hear.  And Roy never suffered as he did in the few moments it took him to relate his foster brother’s crime.  It seemed as though it were as cruel as to drive nails into the fair flesh of the young girls.  And yet they must know.

“How could he do it, how could he?” Eva murmured again and again.

“Perhaps he didn’t,” Jess suddenly exclaimed.  “He’s nothing to show for it—­ the second will, I mean.  Perhaps there’s something wrong with his brain, and he only imagines there was one and he destroyed it.”

But Roy shook his head.  There was Ann to prove, if necessary, that she had signed the other document.

For a long while they sat there.  It seemed as if black despair had settled upon them and there was no way out.

For years Mrs. Pell had leaned upon Sydney.  In an emergency like the present, he would be just the one to whom she would go for counsel.  And now—­ he had failed her utterly.

“What did you say to him, mother?” asked Roy after a while.  “Were—­ were you kind to him?”

“I tried to be.  I tried to remember that he had done all for our sakes, but I feel like a ship without a rudder.”

Roy left his seat near Eva and slipped into a chair next his mother, who had bowed her head on the desk in front of her.

She had been writing a note to a charitable society of which she was a member.  The check she was to send them lay all signed, ready to be inclosed.

“Moms,” whispered Roy, using the pet name Rex had invented and pressing one of his mother’s hands tightly in his, “you have us.  We are growing fast.  I am sure we shall get along.”

“Bless you, my boy.”  His mother kissed him on the forehead, then lifted her eyes reverently, as she added:  “Yes, and I must not forget that there is One who is always a friend to the needy.  And now, children, we must go to bed.  To-morrow we will decide what to do.”

Roy stopped at Rex’s door, went in and found his brother tossing in bed.

“Have you told the girls?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How did they take it?”

“Better than I expected they would.”

“But what are we going to do, Roy?” Rex went on.  “We can’t stay here.”

“No, of course not.”

“But what will people say?  Won’t there be a terrible scandal?”

“You mustn’t talk that way, Rex.  Remember that you and I are the ones mother must depend on now.  If she sees us looking on the dark side it’ll make it so much the harder for her.”