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"There is nothing for either of you," she said, "but something of the nature of business from Mr. Allenerly for me." Then the little flutter of disappointed expectation calmed down, and silence fell again over the room, broken only by the sound of the torn paper and breaking seal, as Margaret opened her parcel. It was a law-document of some sort, bulky and serious. Margaret looked at it, and gave a sharp, sudden cry, which startled the others. The crackling of the paper as she unfolded it seemed to make a noise of disproportionate importance in the stillness of the room; for a law-paper, what could that mean but mere business and money? it could affect nobody's well-being. But the paper, they saw, trembled in Margaret's hands. She could not contain herself as she turned it over. She burst forth into strange exclamations.

"It is only just: it is only right: it is no more than ought to be done: it is the right thing: no more – " But after a while, she added, as if the words were forced from her – "It is not everybody that would have done it. I will not deny him the praise."

"What is it, Margaret? What is it?" Jean said.

Margaret made no immediate reply. She turned over the pages, which were many, with hands that shook, and much crackling and rustling of the paper.

"I cannot read it," she said; "I cannot see to read it. It makes my head go round. Oh, no, it is no more than justice – it is just the right thing; no more – no more – "

"Margaret, it is something far, far out of the ordinary, or you would not cry out like that."

"Yes, it is out of the ordinary; but then the first thing, the wrong doing, was out of the ordinary. This is no more – oh, not the least more – than he ought to have done from the first."

She was so much agitated that her voice shook as well as her hands, and Jean got up, throwing aside her work, and came to her sister's side. Lilias rose too, she did not know why, and stood watching them with an interest she could not explain to herself. Matters of business were not of any interest to her generally. All the law-papers in the world, in ordinary circumstances, would not have drawn her for a moment from a book, or out of the dreamy moods which she called thinking. But she rose now, full of an indefinable anxiety. When Jean had looked anxiously over her sister's shoulder, peering at the paper with wondering eyes for a few minutes, she too cried out with a quavering voice, and threw up her hands.

"What does it mean? What does it mean, Margaret? That he wills it back to her, is that what it says?"

"More than that! There's the letter that explains. He gives it back, every penny of the money, as he received it. It is a great thing to do. I am not grudging him the praise."

"Grudging him! – it is everything he has – it is all his living. Margaret! You will not let her take it – everything he has?"

"Jean, be silent – he had no right to a shilling. It was hers by nature and every law. I will not deny that, as soon as he saw his duty, he has done it like a man."

"His duty? – but it is everything! and he was son and daughter both to the old man. It is all his living: and neither you nor me ever thought what was our duty to our father's father. Margaret! Oh! it is more than justice this – more than justice! You will not let Lilias strip him of every shilling that he has!"

This impassioned dialogue, quick and breathless, gave Lilias a kind of half-enlightenment, kindling the instinct within her. She came forward with a quick, sudden movement.

"If it concerns me, what is it?" she said.

"There would have been no need to tell her, if you could but have held your tongue," cried Margaret to Jean, vehemently, "and now she will insist to hear all."

"It is her right to hear everything," cried Jean, as eagerly. The gentle woman was transformed. She was turned into a powerful opponent, a determined champion. Her face was pale, but she was firmer than Margaret herself.

"What is it?" cried Lilias, coming forward. It seemed to her that she was on the edge of some great change, she could not tell what. Her steps were a little uncertain, her looks a little wild. Strange fancies and tremors touched her mind, she anticipated she knew not what. She put out her hand for the papers. "If it concerns me, will you let me see it?" she said.

"You would not understand," said Margaret, with a quiver of her lips. "It is a law-paper; it is what they call a deed of gift. It is giving you back, Lilias, all your old grandfather died possessed of. It is a wonderful thing. He it was all left to – was perhaps not so ill a person as we thought – "

"Ill! – he was never ill – he is just honour itself," cried Miss Jean, "and righteousness and truth."

"I'm not grudging him his due. The person's name is Lewis Grantley that was your grandfather's companion, and got all his money. His conscience has troubled him. I will say nothing against him. At the last he has done justice and given it all back."

"Is it only about money, then, after all?" Lilias said, with a disappointed tone; then she looked again upon her sisters, in whose agitation she read something further. "There is more than that!" she cried.

"Jean, will you hold your tongue! Do you understand what I am saying to you, Lilias? All your grandfather's money, which has rankled at our hearts since ever he died. Money!" said she – "it's a great fortune. It makes you a great heiress – it restores the Murrays to their right place – it makes wrong right. It is more than money, twenty times more; it's family credit, it's restoration, it's your fit place. By the time you come of age, with good guiding – listen to me, Lilias – you'll be able to have your palace, to reign like a princess, to be just a queen in your own country. Is it wonderful if it goes to my heart? It is more than money – it is just new life for the family and for you."

"And in the mean time," said Miss Jean, who had been kept down almost by physical force, Margaret grasping her by the arm and keeping her back – "in the mean time, he that gives it – which he has no right to do, for it was willed to him and intended for him by the man that owned it all, and who was just as well able to judge as any of us – he will go out into the world penniless; he will have to earn his bread, he does not know where; he will have to give up everything that makes life pleasant. And he has not the up-bringing for it, poor lad. He has lain in the soft and drunk of the sweet all his life. It will be far harder to him to give up than for us to do without it, that have never had it. If you hear the one side, you must hear the other, Lilias."

Lilias, thus suddenly elevated into a judge, gazed at them both with eyes in which wonder soon gave place to a higher sentiment. It had never happened to her in her life before to be appealed to thus. Margaret took up the word almost before Jean had finished. They contended before her unconsciously like two advocates. She drew a chair towards her, and sat down facing them, listening, a strange tumult of different feelings in her mind. By this time the meaning of what Margaret had said had begun to penetrate her intelligence. A great fortune, a palace restored, a reign like a princess – Lilias was not insensible to such hopes; but what was all this about a man who would go out friendless upon the world?

"Stop a little," she said, "Margaret and Jean." The crisis had given to Lilias an extreme dignity and calm. "There is one thing that I have first to hear. The man that you are speaking of, that has done this, who is he? Do I know him?" Lilias said.

They both returned the look with a sort of awe, and both were afraid. They could not tell what might come of it; they had known her from her cradle, and trained her to everything she knew, and yet, in the first great emergency of her life, they neither of them knew what she would do. They looked at her taking her first step alone in the world with a troubled wonder. It was beyond them; they tried to influence the new adventuress amid all these anomalies of existence, but, having said what was in them of their own, were silent, afraid to reveal the one fact upon which all hung, the one thing that must decide all. They did not know how she would take it; they had no clue to the mysteries of that heart which had opened into womanhood before their eyes, nay, under their wings, taking warmth from them. Then Margaret spoke.

"It is right and fit," she said, "that Lilias should be the judge. I would have taken it in my own hand, and saved her the pain and the problem; but sooner or later she would have to know. Lilias, the man that is your grandfather's heir is one that we are all acquainted with. He came among us, I will not say with treachery, with what he thought a good meaning. I will allow him all that. We thought very ill of him, me in particular. I believed him a lickspittle, a creature that had fawned to the old man, and got round him. Perhaps I was altogether mistaken: I will acknowledge to you that I was mistaken in many things. And now he has at last seen what was the root of the whole matter – he has seen that from beginning to end the inheritance was clearly yours. I am not denying that it is a great thing to do. Now that he sees it, he gives it you back out of – I will allow it – a good heart. Here is the gift to you."

Lilias waved the paper away; her voice was hoarse and weak.

"You don't say who it is. Oh! what do I care for all that? Who is he, who is he, this man – "

"You must have divined it. He is just the young man you have known, both here and in London, under the name of Murray, to which I always said he had no right."

Upon this Lilias jumped up in a sudden access of excited feeling; her blue eyes flashed, her fair hair shone against the light behind her like a nimbus. She said not a word, nor left time for such in the lightning speed of her movements, but, snatching the paper suddenly out of Margaret's astonished hands, tore it across and yet across with the action of a fury. Then she flung the fragments into her sister's lap, and stamped her foot upon the ground.

"How dares he, how dares he," she cried, "send that to me! Oh! it is to you, Margaret! and you would traffic in it; but it must come to me in the end. Send him back his rags, if you please, or put them in the fire, or do what you like with them. But never, never more," cried Lilias, "let them be named to me! Me take his money from him! – I would sooner die! And if you do it, Margaret," she cried, advancing closer, shaking her little fist in her sister's face, "if you do it, I will just disown it the moment I am old enough. Oh, how dared he, how dared he send that to me!" Then the height of her excitement dropped, her tone changed, she began to cry like a child. "So that is what he has been doing, that! instead of coming – and me that wanted him so!" Lilias cried, piteously, her lips quivering. She who had been a dignified judge of the highest morals, and an impassioned actor in one of the gravest difficulties of life within the last ten minutes, sank down a little sobbing girl, struck with the keen barb of a child's disappointment, that infinite sharpness of despair which is to last for ever. To think that he should have been occupied with matters like this and not come to her! She was barely eighteen. The great and the small were still confused in her mind. "And me that wanted him so!" she repeated, with that little piteous quiver of her lips, and a sob coming at intervals.

The two ladies sat and gazed at her without a word to say. They exchanged a look. If there was a little subdued triumph in the soft eyes of Jean, they were not for that the less bewildered. Lilias had solved the whole question, not by the tearing up of the paper, which was so easily renewed again, but all unconsciously by that childlike, piteous complaint. Margaret, in the look which she cast upon her sister, acknowledged it as much as Jean did. There was nothing more to say.

CHAPTER XLIV

"My dear Sir,

"Your packet and enclosure were duly received by me, and I think it right, having perhaps misjudged the young man, to begin by telling you that I am now willing to allow I may have been prejudiced, and that there was more to be said than I thought perhaps upon his side of the question. We are all very dour and set upon our own way in this family. Ladies like my sister Jean and me have many lessons to bring down our pride, besides the gift of a judgment not so swayed by personal circumstances as a man's. But Sir Patrick had ever had his own way, and it had no doubt become a law to him. And it may be as you say, that we that were his nearest kin made little effort to gain his confidence. We were led to believe it would have been of little use. In all that, it is just possible we may have been mistaken; and, though I cannot for a moment allow any justification of his unnatural act in passing over Lilias (though unacquainted with her, which is the only excuse, but that too was his own blame), yet I will avow that to make some provision for a companion that had been so attentive, as I am informed Mr. Grantley was, giving up his entire time to him, was no more than what was just. You will see that in admitting so much as this, I am going far, farther than I ever thought to do; but his action in the matter being so honourable, and you speaking so well of him, I am ready to make this concession. The deed you enclosed to me is no more than justice, according to my sentiments. I honour the young man for having strength of mind to do it, but I think it was his duty to do it, and my only surprise is that, being capable of that sacrifice now, he should not have done it sooner, and thus remedied the wrong before further harm could arise. Few persons, however, divine just the right moment for an effort of this kind, and I am very willing for my part to give the young man his due.

"There is, however, I am grieved to say, some difference of opinion in this respect among us, always so united as we have been: and it is in accordance with a desire on the part of my sisters that I have to request you will inform Mr. Grantley that his deed is inadmissible, but that we all think it might be possible to come to some better understanding by a personal interview. If, therefore, he will come here when it is convenient to him, we will receive him. He will be stopping in London, no doubt, till the end of the season; but, having so many friends, we cannot but think it more than likely that he will be coming North to the moors about the 12th or sooner. He will no doubt find his old quarters in the 'Murkley Arms' at his disposal, and a personal conference would redd up many matters that we cannot allow to remain as they are. You will therefore have the kindness to represent this to him. I retain the paper in the mean time, but a glance at it, with the commentaries that have been made upon it in this family, will let him see at once that it is a thing which we could never accept nor think of. You will perhaps say to him, in sending this message, that I Margaret Murray of Gowanbrae (not of Murkley), respect his reasoning and approve his action, which I should in all likelihood have accepted without further comment, if it had been me only that was concerned. But I will not go against the sense of the family, and I desire that he should be acquainted with our determination.

"I hope you are returned in good health, and none the worse for your London diversions. It seems to me that I have long arrears of sleeping to make up, which is hard to do, seeing no person can sleep more than the time they are used to, whatever the occasion may be. You will make our compliments to Mrs. Allenerly and the young people, who, I hope, are all in good health and giving you satisfaction.

"I remain, my dear Mr. Allenerly,

"Your faithful servant,

"Margaret Murray (of Gowanbrae)."

Miss Margaret was, on the whole, pleased with the construction of this letter. She smiled somewhat grimly to herself as she re-read her sentence about the deed and the commentaries upon it. The one emphatic commentary upon it was that of Lilias, and nothing could be more conclusive. It lay torn in six pieces in Margaret's desk. It was impossible to express an opinion more decisively. There had been a pause of consternation after Lilias' self-betrayal. But the look the sisters exchanged over her was one in which volumes were expressed. Margaret's eyes were dim with trouble and astonishment. To her, as to so many parents and caretakers, the young creature who had grown up at her side was still a child. She had been vaguely alarmed about her, afraid in the abstract lest she should love unwisely, prepared in the abstract for suitors and "offers." But it had not occurred to her that it was possible for Lilias, unassisted, uncompanioned, to leap by herself into the greatest of decisions, and to entertain anything like a passion in that youthful bosom. In some mysterious way, her fears had never settled upon Lewis at all. She had seen her child surrounded by other and more brilliant competitors for her favour. He, discouraged, no doubt, by her own refusal to consider his claims, had been too generous, too magnanimous, she thought, for a lover. And they had parted with him without any harm done. Lilias had been cheerful enough on the journey, not like a girl who had left her heart behind. She had not drooped even when they reached home, though something dreamy, something languid, had appeared in her. Margaret had been entirely re-assured in this respect. But in a moment all this fabric of consolation went to the winds. She looked at Jean with wonder and dismay unspeakable, and met her eyes in which there was a subdued satisfaction mingled with surprise. But there was no time to resent that glimmer of triumph. The chief thing was that not the faintest possibility remained between them of doubt or uncertainty. Without a conflict the question was decided. Margaret might struggle as she pleased, it was a foregone conclusion. The eyes of the sisters said to each other, "This being so, then – "

There was no more to be said. Even Margaret, who would have stood to the death under any other circumstances, felt the arms drop out of her hands. What could be done against Lilias, against that sob, so ungrammatical, so piteous? "And me that wanted him so!"

Long and troubled were the conferences held between Margaret and Jean thereafter. One of the questions discussed was whether Lilias herself should be called and examined on the subject, but this both decided was a thing not to be done.

"To open her heart to you and me when they have never opened their hearts to one another," Miss Jean said. "Could we ask it, Margaret?"

"You think you are further ben in such subjects than I am," said Margaret. "But who thinks of asking it? Would I profane her thoughts, the infant that she is? No me! Deep though I regret it, and hard though I take it, she shall never think shame to look me in the face, whatever happens."

"It is not just that she would think shame," said Jean, the better informed.

But this expedient was rejected unanimously. They sat together till late in the night discussing the subject in all its branches. It is curious how easy of acceptance a decision becomes which may have been resisted and struggled against with might and main, as soon as it is seen beyond all question to be inevitable. Margaret on that morning would have declared that a marriage between Lilias Murray and her supplanter was a thing she would die to prevent. But, after her little sister's self-betrayal, the impossibility shifted and changed altogether, and Margaret found that the one thing which she would die to prevent, was not Lilias' marriage, but Lilias' unhappiness. The change was instantaneous.

"This being so, then – "

It was all over. There was no longer any ground upon which to struggle and resist.

As for Lilias, she escaped to her room as soon as she had come to herself and realized what had happened. The girl was two or three different creatures in these days. She was a child ready to cry, ready to commit herself on a sudden provocation, and a woman able to stand upon the edge of the new world which she contemplated with an astonished comprehension of its loftiness and greatness, and to meet its higher requirements with a spirit as high. She felt able to judge in her own small person, with an ideal sense of youthful detachment from all sophistications, the greater question, and at the same time unable to bear the smallest contrarieties without a burst of superficial emotion, anger, or despair. Her development was but half accomplished. Nobody understood this, neither did she herself understand it. She escaped from the observation of her sisters with a sense of impatience, which did not for some time deepen into the sense of having betrayed herself. That indeed scarcely came at all. There was so much else to think of. She went to her own room, and threw herself down upon the sofa, with her heart beating and her head throbbing, every pulse sounding, she thought, in her ears in the excitement that possessed her. So that was what he had been doing! Not lingering, as disappointment had begun to picture him, in London among his fine friends, dancing, talking, as if Lilias had never been; but employing his time, his thoughts, in transferring to her his fortune, all he had in the world. Lilias tingled with impatience, with a desire to clench her small fist in his face, as she had done to Margaret, and ask him how dared he, how dared he! While underneath, in her growing soul, there diffused itself that ennobling satisfaction in the consciousness of a nobleness in him, which enables women to bear all the strokes of fate, the loss of their heroes, of their sons, joyful that their beloved have done well. By degrees this higher sentiment swallowed up everything else in her. She sat up, and put back her ravelled hair, and held her head high. There had been an injustice, and, at the cost of everything he had, he had set it right. He had gone beyond all duty, all necessity, and despoiled himself of everything, not, the letter said, "for love, but for justice." She was a girl in love, and it may be supposed would rather have believed that her lover had done something partially wrong for love than altogether right for justice; but those who think so have no knowledge of the ideal of youth. Her heart swelled and rose with this thought. She felt that happiness, that glory of approval which is the very crown of love. The colour came to her cheeks. She jumped up with that elastic bound which was natural to her, and stood in the middle of the room with her head high, smiling at him through the distance and the unknown, approving him. At that moment she felt with pride that the tie between them was not a mere empty liking, a natural attraction towards youth and pleasant qualities, or that still less profound but more enthralling charm of beauty, which so often draws two young creatures together. Lewis had no beauty. There were hundreds of others more gifted than he; but which of them all could have done this, "not for love, but for justice!" She began to go deep into it, this great action, and to set it forth and enhance it to herself in every way. He had but to have come to her, to have spoken to her as he had meant to do (she knew) that evening, when those two nobodies, those two fools, had taken possession of the corner under the palm-trees, and she would have accepted him, and this justice would have been done in a roundabout way, not for justice, but for love. But when it came to the point (oh! yes, oh! yes, it was something more than the foolish couple under the palms) his mind had felt that this was inadequate, he had shut his mouth in spite of himself and given over his hopes, and determined that it must be justice and not love. The other would have been the happier way: all this waiting, and suspense, and the separation, and those lingering days without him would have been spared; but this was the better! Lilias felt herself grow taller, grander, in her approval of everything; he had done what was right, not what was pleasant. The growing weariness, the gathering doubt, the film which had seemed to be rising between them, were all made desirable, noble by this issue. He would not have made her suffer, oh, not a day's suspense, if he could have helped it; but it was inevitable, it was better thus —

And now – Lilias caught her breath a little, and laughed for pleasure, and blushed for shy shamefacedness. She would have liked to write herself, and send him the torn up deed, and say, "What folly! is not thine mine, and mine thine?" but she remembered with a blush that she could not, that it would be "unwomanly," that word with which Margaret had scared her all her life, that she must wait now till he came to set everything right. The waiting brought a little pang with it not altogether to be chased away. "Of course he will come at once," she said to herself. But when there is distance, and separation, and all the chances of the unknown between you and the person whom you love, the "of course" has always a quaver in it. This was all. Her happy excitement, her satisfaction, her triumph in his excellence, would have made her perhaps too confident of every blessedness, but for this one faint note of uncertainty which just trembled through it, and made it perhaps more exquisite, though Lilias did not think so. The waiting, which she thought the only pain in the matter, was the perfume, the flavour of the whole.

Next day, Margaret wrote to Mr. Allenerly the letter above recorded; by the time she did so, her mind had worked out the subject. She had grudged the great match which it had always been on the cards that Lilias might make; but, at all events, it was not a long-leggit lad who had taken her eye, to be a disappointment and vexation to all her future life.

"He is not a fool," she said, "that is a great thing, for a fool is the most unmanageable of all the creatures on this earth; and he has plenty of resources, he will not be on her hands for ever: and he must have a kind nature, or he would never have taken such care of yon old man. And he cannot be much heeding about money for its own sake; and he must have a strong sense of justice. And on the whole, though I have set my face against him, I have always liked him," Margaret said, with a sigh.

"He has just the tenderest heart and the best disposition that ever was," cried Jean.

"Oh! yes, no doubt you will speak well of him: for he is in love with you too," said Margaret.

"Oh! Margaret, that is what I like in him – he has no jealousy, as small creatures have. He is just as fond as he can be of those that like her best. He is in love with us all three."

Upon this Margaret shook her head.

"Not with me – that would be beyond nature – for I have scorned him and denied him."

"Nevertheless," said Miss Jean, with the firmness that necessity had developed in her, "he is in love with us all three."

The next morning there was a very different kind of scene in Mr. Allenerly's office, where the excellent writer read Miss Margaret's letter with a grin that was somewhat cynical.

"They may try as they like," he said to himself, "they will not get him now. I said he was hasty, I said he was premature, but he would not be guided by me." He stretched out his hand for the newspaper which lay on one side of his table with his morning letters, and ran his finger down a line of small paragraphs: then shook his head when he had found the one he wanted, and, drawing his paper towards him, replied at once as follows: —

"My dear Madam,

"Your communication I would have had much pleasure in forwarding to my client, Mr. Lewis Grantley, sometimes calling himself Murray, but I regret that that is not now in my power. You will easily understand that, after despoiling himself of everything he had, it was no longer possible for him to live like a gentleman, doing nothing, in an expensive place like London. His friends were all very kind, but he has a great deal of sense for so young a man, and saw that in that there was nothing to trust to. So he took advantage of his opportunities, and struck when the iron was hot. He had little difficulty in getting an appointment as secretary to Sir Andrew Morton, the new Governor of the Pharaway Islands. He was in good spirits, comparatively speaking, and said the Governor was an old friend, and that he had every hope of getting on well and enjoying the post – which I make no doubt he will, being one of the people that always fall on their feet: which no doubt is greatly due to his being of a very friendly kind of nature himself.

"It is a long voyage, and he did not expect to arrive till September; but, any way, I will forward to him your letter, and he will no doubt reply in good time. The appointment was either for two or three years. It was strongly on his mind to go to Murkley before he left, but there were delays about preparing the deed, for which I, I am afraid, am partly responsible, and I discouraged him, remembering that you would not hear of it. I imagine, by the tone of your letter, that you may have more or less changed your mind; but, unfortunately, it is too late.

"If I hear anything of Mr. Murray during his voyage, I will let you know. I am none the worse, I thank you kindly, for my London diversions. I avoided late hours and hot rooms, which play the mischief with the constitution. My wife warmly reciprocates your kind messages, and I remain, my dear Miss Murray,

"Your obedient servant to command,

"A. Allenerly."

This letter fell like a thunderbolt on Murkley. They had anticipated not only no such obstacle, but no obstacle at all. They had thought that Lewis would arrive by the next train, throwing aside all his engagements, too happy to be called upon to appear before them and explain all that he intended and wished. Margaret for a time was absolutely silenced by the news; it fell upon her like a stone. Fortunately she was alone when it came, and was not besieged by the anxious looks of the others, which would have been more than she could bear. After she had fully realized it, she sent for Jean and communicated the news to her.