“After,” she said with difficulty, struggling against the rising in her throat, “after--it was found that I could not give it you back. If I did so, I too was to lose everything. Oh, wait, wait, till I have done! What am I to do? I put it in your hands. If I try to give you any part, it is lost to us all three. What am I to do? I can take no advice from any but you. What I wish is to restore everything to you; but if I attempt to do so, all is lost. What am I to do? What am I to do?” “Winnie, what you will do is to make yourself ill in the meantime.” “What does it matter?” she cried wildly; “if I were to die, I suppose it would go to them as my heirs.” The blank faces round her had no pity in them for Winnie. They were for the moment too deeply engrossed with the news which they had just heard. Miss Farrell alone stooped over her, and stood by her, holding her hand. Mrs. George, who had been listening, bewildered, unable to divine what all this could mean, broke the silence with a cry. “She don’t say a word of Georgie. Is there nothing for Georgie? I don’t know what you mean, all about giving and not giving--it’s our right. George, ain’t it our right?” “There are no rights in our family,” said George; “but I don’t know what it means any more than you.” Here Tom stepped forward into the midst of the group, lifting his sullen eyebrows. “I know what it means,” he said. “It is easy enough to tell what it means. If she takes you in, she can’t take me in. I saw how things were going long ago. First one was got out of the house and then another, but she was always there, saying what she pleased, getting over the old man. Do you think if he had been in his right senses, he would have driven away his sons, and put a girl over our heads? I’ll tell you what,” he cried with passion, “I am not going to stand it if you are. She was there always at one side of him, and the doctor at the other. The daughter and the doctor and nobody else. Every one knows how a doctor can work upon your nerves; and a woman that is always nursing you, making herself sweet. If there ever was undue influence, there it is. And I don’t mean to stand it for one.” George was not enraged like his brother: he looked from one to another with his anxious eyes. “If you don’t stand it, what can you do?” he said.