She flew back again, not even waiting to help her sisters with the tea. Silently Elizabeth took up the tray of cups and saucers, and Patty the teapot and the plate of bread and butter; and they followed her with beating hearts. This was the crisis of their long day's trial. Paul was tearing at the intestines of the bureau like a cat at the wainscot that has just given sanctuary to a mouse, and his father was too much absorbed in helping him to notice their return. "Now, pull, pull!" cried the old man, at the moment when the sisters closed the door behind them. "Break it, if it won't come. A--a--ah!" as a sudden crash of splintered wood resounded through the room, "there they are at last! I _thought_ they must be here somewhere!" "What is it?" inquired Elizabeth, setting down her tea-tray, and hastily running to his side. He was stripping a pink tape from a thin bundle of blue papers in a most unprofessional state of excitement and agitation. "What is it?" he echoed triumphantly. "This is what it is, my dear"--and he began in a loud voice to read from the outside of the blue packet, to which he pointed with a shaking finger--"The will of Kingscote Yelverton, formerly of Yelverton, in the county of Kent--Elizabeth Yelverton, sole executrix." CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE TIME FOR ACTION. Yes, it was their father's will--the will they had vainly hunted for a year ago, little thinking what manner of will it was; executed when Eleanor was a baby in long clothes, and providing for their inheritance of that enormous English fortune. When they were a little recovered from the shock of this last overwhelming surprise, Mr. Brion broke the seal of the document, and formally and solemnly read it to them. It was very short, but perfectly correct in form, and the testator (after giving to his wife, in the event of her surviving him, the sole control of the entire property, which was unentailed, for her lifetime) bequeathed to his younger daughters, and to any other children who might have followed them, a portion of thirty thousand pounds apiece, and left the eldest, Elizabeth, heiress of Yelverton and residuary legatee. Patty and Eleanor were thus to be made rich beyond _their_ dreams of avarice, but Elizabeth, who had been her father's favourite, was to inherit a colossal fortune. That was, of course, supposing such wealth existed in fact as well as in the imagination of this incredible madman. Paul and his father found themselves unable to conceive of such a thing as that any one in his senses should possess these rare and precious privileges, so passionately desired and so recklessly sought and sinned for by those who had them not, and should yet abjure, them voluntarily, and against every natural temptation and moral obligation to do otherwise. It was something wholly outside the common course of human affairs, and unintelligible to men of business. Both of them felt that they must get out of the region of romance and into the