'About seeking a situation, I know there is nothing else left for the poor girl to do,' continued the writer; 'but I besought her to wait a little--to make my house her home, if she chose, for a time; but she told me that she did not mind work or poverty. I replied that she knew nothing of either, but a sad smile and a resolute glance were my only answer.' The old man's love of himself, his upbraiding words when they last parted, and his own unkind treatment (to say the least of it) of Hester, all came surging back on Roland's memory now. 'I shall not readily forget Miss Maule's passionate outburst of grief and pain on leaving Merlwood,' continued the old Writer to the Signet; 'but all there seemed for the time to be sacred to the hallowed memories of her father, her mother, and her past childhood! 'And next I have to relate something more startling still--the sudden death of your stepmother, and to congratulate you on being now the true and undoubted _Laird of Earlshaugh_. 'Actuated, I know not precisely by what sentiment--whether by just indignation at the character of her brother, or by remorse for your false position with regard to the property--Mrs. Lindsay, as an act of reparation, and to preclude all legal action on the part of any heir of her own or of her brother, Hawkey Sharpe, that might crop up, by a will drawn out and prepared by myself, duly recorded at Her Majesty's General Register House, Edinburgh, has left the entire estate to you, precisely and in all entirety as it was left to her. 'She sent a message when she did this. It was simply: "When my time comes, and I feel assured that it is not far off now, and that I shall not see him again, he will know that I have done my best." 'There must have been an emotion of remorse in her mind, as I now know that for some days before the demise of your worthy father, he eagerly urged that you should be telegraphed for, and more than once expressed a vehement desire to see _me_, his legal adviser, but in vain, as Mrs. Lindsay number two and her brother Hawkey barred the way; so the first will in the former's favour remained unaltered. 'Since you last left home, Mr. Hawkey forged his sister's name to a cheque for £2,000 to cover a bill or racing debt. It duly came to hand. Mrs. Lindsay looked at the document, and knew in an instant that her name had been used, and, remembering the amount of Hawkey's demand on her, knew also that she had been shamefully and cruelly deceived. 'The sequence of the numbers in her cheque-book showed by the absence of the counterfoil where one had been abstracted--that for the £2,000 payable to bearer. In her rage she repudiated it, and the law took its course. 'The nameless horror that is the sure precursor of coming evil took possession of her, and then it was that she executed in your favour the will referred to, instigated thereto not a little by Hawkey's incessant and annoying references to her secret ailment--disease of the heart.