No Name Wilkie Collins (e book reader android TXT) đ
- Author: Wilkie Collins
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âLet me try to master it, in my turn,â said Magdalen. âI have a particular reason for wishing to know as much about this letter as you know yourself. What has it done for others, and what is it to do for me?â
âMy dear Magdalen, how strangely you look at it! how strangely you talk of it! Worthless as it may appear, that morsel of paper gives you a fortune.â
âIs my only claim to the fortune the claim which this letter gives me?â
âYes; the letter is your only claim. Shall I try if I can explain it in two words? Taken by itself, the letter might, in the lawyerâs opinion, have been made a matter for dispute, though I am sure George would have sanctioned no proceeding of that sort. Taken, however, with the postscript which Admiral Bartram attached to it (you will see the lines if you look under the signature on the third page), it becomes legally binding, as well as morally binding, on the admiralâs representatives. I have exhausted my small stock of legal words, and must go on in my own language instead of in the lawyerâs. The end of the thing was simply this. All the money went back to Mr. Noel Vanstoneâs estate (another legal word! my vocabulary is richer than I thought), for one plain reasonâ âthat it had not been employed as Mr. Noel Vanstone directed. If Mrs. Girdlestone had lived, or if George had married me a few months earlier, results would have been just the other way. As it is, half the money has been already divided between Mr. Noel Vanstoneâs next of kin; which means, translated into plain English, my husband, and his poor bedridden sisterâ âwho took the money formally, one day, to satisfy the lawyer, and who gave it back again generously, the next, to satisfy herself. So much for one half of this legacy. The other half, my dear, is all yours. How strangely events happen, Magdalen! It is only two years since you and I were left disinherited orphansâ âand we are sharing our poor fatherâs fortune between us, after all!â
âWait a little, Norah. Our shares come to us in very different ways.â
âDo they? Mine comes to me by my husband. Yours comes to youâ ââ She stopped confusedly, and changed color. âForgive me, my own love!â she said, putting Magdalenâs hand to her lips. âI have forgotten what I ought to have remembered. I have thoughtlessly distressed you!â
âNo!â said Magdalen; âyou have encouraged me.â
âEncouraged you?â
âYou shall see.â
With those words, she rose quietly from the sofa, and walked to the open window. Before Norah could follow her, she had torn the Trust to pieces, and had cast the fragments into the street.
She came back to the sofa and laid her head, with a deep sigh of relief, on Norahâs bosom. âI will owe nothing to my past life,â she said. âI have parted with it as I have parted with those torn morsels of paper. All the thoughts and all the hopes belonging to it are put away from me forever!â
âMagdalen, my husband will never allow you! I will never allow you myselfâ ââ
âHush! hush! What your husband thinks right, Norah, you and I will think right too. I will take from you what I would never have taken if that letter had given it to me. The end I dreamed of has come. Nothing is changed but the position I once thought we might hold toward each other. Better as it is, my loveâ âfar, far better as it is!â
So she made the last sacrifice of the old perversity and the old pride. So she entered on the new and nobler life.
A month had passed. The autumn sunshine was bright even in the murky streets, and the clocks in the neighborhood were just striking two, as Magdalen returned alone to the house in Aaronâs Buildings.
âIs he waiting for me?â she asked, anxiously, when the landlady let her in.
He was waiting in the front room. Magdalen stole up the stairs and knocked at the door. He called to her carelessly and absently to come in, plainly thinking that it was only the servant who applied for permission to enter the room.
âYou hardly expected me so soon?â she said speaking on the threshold, and pausing there to enjoy his surprise as he started to his feet and looked at her.
The only traces of illness still visible in her face left a delicacy in its outline which added refinement to her beauty. She was simply dressed in muslin. Her plain straw bonnet had no other ornament than the white ribbon with which it was sparingly trimmed. She had never looked lovelier in her best days than she looked now, as she advanced to the table at which he had been sitting, with a little basket of flowers that she had brought with her from the country, and offered him her hand.
He looked anxious and careworn when she saw him closer. She interrupted his first inquiries and congratulations to ask if he had remained in London since they had partedâ âif he had not even gone away, for a few days only, to see his friends in Suffolk?
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