By the side of the table, very pale and profoundly discomposed, sat the next of kin; a woman, of appearance not unaccordant with that of the house, over fifty? dark-complexioned and full of wrinkles, with a certain cloud of habitual shabbiness, not to be cast aside, impairing the perfection of her new mourning. Her _new_ mourning, poor soul! got on the strength of that letter containing the will, which had been placed in her safe keeping. She was evidently doing everything she could to command herself, and conceal her agitation. But it was not a very easy matter. Cherished visions of years, and hopes that this morning had seemed on the point of settling into reality, were breaking up before her, each with its poignant circumstances of mortification and bitterness and dread disappointment. She looked at everybody in the room with a kind of agonised appeal--could it really be true, might not her ears have deceived her?--and strained her troubled gaze upon that paper, not without an instinctive thought that it was wrongly read, or misunderstood, or that some mysterious change had taken place on it in the transfer from her possession to that of Mr Brown. His amazement and dismay did not convince the poor dismayed woman. She stretched out her hand eagerly to get the paper to read it for herself. He might have changed it in reading it; he might have missed something, or added something, that altered the meaning. Anything might have happened, rather than the reality that her confidence had been deceived and her hopes were gone. “Did you know of this, Mrs Christian?” said the rector, who stood at the other end of the room with his hat in his hand. Did she know! She could have gnashed her teeth at the foolish question, in her excitement and exasperation. She made a hysterical motion with her head to answer. Her daughter, who had come to the back of her chair, and who knew the rector must not be offended, supplied the words that failed to her mother--“No; we thought we were to have it,” said the poor girl, innocently. There was a little movement of sympathy and compassion among the other persons present. But mingled with this came a sound of a different description; a cough, not an expression of physical weakness, but of moral sentiment; an irritating, critical, inarticulate remark upon that melancholy avowal. It came from the only other woman present, the servant of the house. When the disappointed relation heard it, she flushed into sudden rage, and made an immediate identification of her enemy. It was not dignified, but it was very natural. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it was the only relief which her feelings could have had