"There is no need to tell them," said a voice behind her. "They know it already. Mr. Vanstone's daughters are 'nobody's children,' and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle's mercy!" It was Magdalen who spoke--Magdalen, with a changeless stillness on her white face, and an icy resignation in her steady, grey eyes. From under the open window of the room in which Mr. Pendril had told his story this girl of eighteen had heard every word, and never once betrayed herself. "I understand that my late brother"--so ran Michael Vanstone's letter of instruction to his solicitor--"has left two illegitimate children, both of them young women who are of an age to earn their own livelihood. Be so good as to tell them that neither you nor I have anything to do with questions of mere sentiment. Let them understand that Providence has restored to me the inheritance that ought always to have been mine, and I will not invite retribution on my own head by assisting those children to continue the imposition which their parents practised, and by helping them to take a place in the world to which they are not entitled." "Norah," said Magdalen, turning to her sister, "if we both live to grow old, and if ever you forget all we owe to Michael Vanstone--come to me, and I will remind you." _II.--Tricked into Marriage_ By fair means or foul, Magdalen, who, with Norah, had now made her home with Miss Garth in London, had sworn to herself that she would win back the property of which she had been robbed by Michael Vanstone. Selling all her jewellery and dresses, she managed to secure two hundred pounds, and with this sum in her pocket she secretly left home. The theatrical manager, who had offered her an engagement should she ever require it, had moved to York, and it was to that city that Magdalen hastened. Her absence was at once discovered, and Miss Garth resorted to every possible means of tracing her to her destination. A reward of fifty pounds was offered, and her mode of procedure being suspected, handbills setting forth her appearance were posted in York. It was one of these bills that attracted the attention of a certain Captain Wragge. Captain Wragge was the stepson of Mrs. Vanstone's mother, and had persisted in regarding himself as a member of her family, and, having known of the real relationship that existed between his half-sister and Mr. Andrew Vanstone, had obtained from the latter a small annual subsidy as the price of his silence. A confessed rogue, the captain imagined he saw in this handbill an opportunity of re-stocking his exhausted exchequer.