understand at last."
"She is engaged to him, and he is a capital fellow; but for all that unless we find the will, or she has this £10,000, she knows, and I know it by her face, that it may be years before she marries Percy Desborough, if she ever does so."
"By George," Harry exclaimed, taking his pipe suddenly from his mouth, and jumping up from his chair,—"By George, if I thought for a moment that Percy Desborough——"
"There, you will interrupt me, Harry," Polly said, looking for the first time up from the fire with a little glance of amusement into his angry face. "Do sit down and hear me out, and you will see that there is no vengeance to be taken upon any one."
Harry looked more than half inclined to be very angry; however he resumed his seat, and took short sulky puffs at his pipe.
"The fact is, Harry, you have heard of Lady Desborough, and from what you have heard you must know——"
"My dear Polly," I interrupted in my turn, assured at last that she had intuitively arrived at a correct conclusion about the state of my engagement with Percy,—"My dear Polly——"
"My dear Agnes," she said, "you promised to hear me out. But, my darling,"—and she spoke in a very soft tender voice, turning round to me, and laying her hand on mine,—"you know what I am going to say to Harry; if it is painful, will you go away till I have done? Harry must hear it before he can come to any correct conclusion about this money."
I shook my head silently, but pressed her hand, which, while she went on, still remained resting in mine.
"Lady Desborough," and now she was looking steadily into the fire again, as if she read there all she was saying, "is a proud woman of the world, very ambitious, and very self-willed. Had Percy followed her wishes, and remained in the Guards, she would have expected him to have made a first-rate match; as it is, she could not hope that any earl's daughter would unite her fortunes to those of a cornet in a cavalry regiment, and troop with him out to India. When Percy therefore succeeded in persuading our Agnes here, that it was the best thing she could do, Lady Desborough was delighted at the match, which, with Agnes's £25,000, was vastly better than she could have expected. But when Mr. Harmer dies, what happens? Agnes has no fortune. All this time that I have been at school since Mr. Harmer died, and the will was missing, I have wondered and thought over what Lady Desborough would do. I came to the conclusion that she would wait for a bit, and would take no decided steps until it was clear that the will would never be found, but that unquestionably when it was proved to be gone she would interfere to break off the engagement between Percy and Agnes. I come back here, and what do I find? I find very little said about the engagement, and Agnes looking pale and depressed. Percy's letters come regularly; Agnes takes them up into her room, and comes down again after a very long time, with flushed cheeks, and a soft look, and yet not perfectly happy—that is not brightly happy. What does this mean? Just what I had anticipated. Percy is unchanged; the money, in his eyes, makes no difference whatever, but there is an obstacle somewhere; that obstacle being of course Lady Desborough. Probably by the continuance of the correspondence, she has not yet given up hopes of the will being found, and has not therefore taken any decided step, but has, I should imagine, plainly shown what her intentions will be if the fortune is not recovered. In support of this view, I see Agnes absorbed in the result of this search for the secret room; I saw her delight when one of the hidden springs was found—and this not because Agnes loves money, but because she loves Percy Desborough, and knows that without the fortune she cannot be married to him."
"Why cannot Percy marry her in spite of his mother?" Harry growled in an unconvinced way. "He is not a boy; why can he not do as he likes?"
"Because his present income and his future fortune depend upon her. I heard Agnes say so the last time I was at home. She could refuse to allow him one penny, and leave every farthing she possesses to Ada. You don't suppose that a subaltern in a cavalry regiment can keep a wife on his pay, even if Agnes would marry him under the circumstances, which she would not. Is all this true, Agnes darling?" she said, turning again to me, and this time I saw the tears were brimming up in her great blue eyes.
"You are certainly a witch, Polly," I answered, trying to smile, but the tears were stealing down my cheeks too, as I got up and kissed her flushed face very tenderly and affectionately. To me all this was a perfect revelation. Here was my little sister Polly, whom I had always looked upon as a mere child, thinking and talking like a woman, and a very sensible, loving woman, too. I felt that in that half hour's conversation my child-sister was gone for ever, and that I had gained in her place a dear friend in whom I could trust and confide every secret of my heart. As for Harry, he was completely silenced.
"Well, oh most sapient brother," Polly asked, turning to him in her old laughing way, "do you confess that all this never entered into your mind; indeed, that you knew no more about it than the man in the moon?"
"By Jove!" Harry said with a great effort, "I confess you have fairly astonished me, as much by yourself as by your story. I think that you are right, and that in these matters you are more of a woman than I am of a man. How you found this all out I cannot conceive; it certainly never entered into my head. I thought of the effect which the money would have upon myself, and upon you, but Agnes I hardly took into consideration. I thought of her marriage with Percy as a sort of settled thing, and knowing him to have a handsome allowance, I never gave her case a second thought. But I see you are quite right, and that we must, of course, accept this money."
"Indeed, we will not," I said; "with my consent, this money shall never be accepted."
"That is not fair, Agnes," Polly said. "You know we agreed that two votes should carry the day."
"I did, Polly; but I have a right to say what I think about it before it is put to the vote. I acknowledge all that Polly has said about my affairs to be true. I allow that I do believe that my marriage with Percy depends upon this will being found. But for all that, I say we cannot take this money. These women have robbed us of £25,000 each; they have robbed Sophy of £75,000; robbed us as actually as if they had stolen it from our possession—and now they offer, as a gift, £10,000 each to us. If we take it, it is on an understanding that we renounce all further claim, that we receive it as a free gift from these enemies of ours; and by this act not only should we, as it were, pledge ourselves to make no further efforts to find the will, we should not only sell our birthright to our enemies, but we should be bound to desert Sophy, and so leave her in hopeless poverty, for without our assistance she has not the slightest chance of ever finding the will. All this would be a miserable degradation—a degradation so deep that nothing could satisfy our own consciences to it; even my marriage to Percy could not reconcile it to myself, and he himself would blame me for it. No, no, dears, this would be a shameful action. Let us refuse it at once. You, I know, would do it for my sake; but I would not do it for myself, much less allow you to do so. We have really, at present, strong hopes of finding the will; let us trust to that; let us believe that in the end we shall be righted. If not, God's will be done. The evil may seem to prosper at present, but at any rate let us make no terms with it."
Polly and Harry were both silent. Polly was crying fast now—crying, that her little scheme for my happiness had failed; but yet they both felt as I did, and she could urge nothing further.
"There, dears, I know you both agree with me in your hearts, so let us say no more about it."
And so it was settled; and when papa came in soon after, I told him that we were unanimously of opinion that the money could not be accepted. Papa then said, that although he had not wished to bias us in our decision, yet that he quite agreed with us, and was very glad we had so decided. So the next day he wrote to Miss Harmer, acknowledging the receipt of her letter, and stating that, for various reasons into which it was not necessary to enter, we felt ourselves obliged to decline the offer. This affair
