He had a small but sufficient income of his own.  He had lived many years in England, and he held an excellent position in society.  These recommendations, however, availed nothing with Mr. Fairlie.  In many of his opinions he was an Englishman of the old school, and he hated a foreigner simply and solely because he was a foreigner.  The utmost that he could be prevailed on to do, in after years—­ mainly at Miss Fairlie’s intercession—­was to restore his sister’s name to its former place in his will, but to keep her waiting for her legacy by giving the income of the money to his daughter for life, and the money itself, if her aunt died before her, to her cousin Magdalen.  Considering the relative ages of the two ladies, the aunt’s chance, in the ordinary course of nature, of receiving the ten thousand pounds, was thus rendered doubtful in the extreme; and Madame Fosco resented her brother’s treatment of her as unjustly as usual in such cases, by refusing to see her niece, and declining to believe that Miss Fairlie’s intercession had ever been exerted to restore her name to Mr. Fairlie’s will.

Such was the history of the ten thousand pounds.  Here again no difficulty could arise with Sir Percival’s legal adviser.  The income would be at the wife’s disposal, and the principal would go to her aunt or her cousin on her death.

All preliminary explanations being now cleared out of the way, I come at last to the real knot of the case—­to the twenty thousand pounds.

This sum was absolutely Miss Fairlie’s own on her completing her twenty-first year, and the whole future disposition of it depended, in the first instance, on the conditions I could obtain for her in her marriage-settlement.  The other clauses contained in that document were of a formal kind, and need not be recited here.  But the clause relating to the money is too important to be passed over.  A few lines will be sufficient to give the necessary abstract of it.

My stipulation in regard to the twenty thousand pounds was simply this:  The whole amount was to be settled so as to give the income to the lady for her life—­afterwards to Sir Percival for his life—­ and the principal to the children of the marriage.  In default of issue, the principal was to be disposed of as the lady might by her will direct, for which purpose I reserved to her the right of making a will.  The effect of these conditions may be thus summed up.  If Lady Glyde died without leaving children, her half-sister Miss Halcombe, and any other relatives or friends whom she might be anxious to benefit, would, on her husband’s death, divide among them such shares of her money as she desired them to have.  If, on the other hand, she died leaving children, then their interest, naturally and necessarily, superseded all other interests whatsoever.  This was the clause—­and no one who reads it can fail, I think, to agree with me that it meted out equal justice to all parties.