Maryanne was as much on the alert as her sister. She had been for the last six months her mother’s pet, as Sarah Jane had been her father’s darling. There was some excuse, therefore, for Maryanne when she endeavoured to get what she could in the scramble. Sarah Jane played the part of Goneril to the life, and would have denied her father the barest necessaries of existence, had it not ultimately turned out that the property was his own. Maryanne was not well pleased to see her sister returning to the house at such a moment. She, at least, had been dutiful to her mother, or, if undutiful, not openly so. If Mrs. McCockerell had the power of leaving her property to whom she pleased, it would be only natural that she should leave it to the daughter who had obeyed her, and not to the daughter who had added to personal disobedience the worse fault of having been on friendly terms with her father. This, one would have thought, would have been clear at any rate to Jones, if not to Sarah Jane; but they both seemed at this time to have imagined that the eldest child had some right to the inheritance as being the eldest. It will be observed by this and by many other traits in his character that Mr. Jones had never enjoyed the advantages of an education. Mrs. McCockerell never spoke after the fit first struck her. She never moved an eye, or stirred a limb, or uttered a word. It was a wretched household at that time. The good lady died on a Wednesday, and was gathered to her fathers at Kensal Green Cemetery on the Tuesday following. During the intervening days Mr. Jones and Sarah Jane took on themselves as though they were owners of everything. Maryanne did try to prevent the inventory, not wishing it to appear that Mrs. Jones had any right to meddle; but the task was too congenial to Sarah Jane’s spirit to allow of her giving it over. She revelled in the work. It was a delight to her to search out hidden stores of useless wealth,—to bring forth to the light forgotten hoards of cups and saucers, and to catalogue every rag on the premises. The house at this time was not a pleasant one. Mr. Brown, finding that Jones, in whom he had trusted, had turned against him, put himself very much into the hands of a young friend of his, named George Robinson. Who and what George Robinson was will be told in the next chapter. “There are three questions,” said Robinson, “to be asked and answered:—Had Mrs. B. the power to make a will? If so, did she make a will? And if so, what was the will she made?” Mr. Brown couldn’t remember whether or no there had been any signing of papers at his marriage. A good deal of rum and water, he said, had been drunk; and there might have been signing too,—but he didn’t remember it.