solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle’s death, and to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman’s orphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a quarrel, never forgiven, between him and my father. He wrote again a few weeks since, to intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking if we knew anything of her. A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to find her out. You know the rest.” Again he was going, but I set my back against the door.
“Do let me speak,” I said; “let me have one moment to draw breath and reflect.” I paused—he stood before me, hat in hand, looking composed enough. I resumed—
“Your mother was my father’s sister?”
“Yes.”
“My aunt, consequently?”
He bowed.
“My uncle John was your uncle John? You, Diana, and Mary are his sister’s children, as I am his brother’s child?”
“Undeniably.”
“You three, then, are my cousins; half our blood on each side flows from the same source?”
“We are cousins; yes.”
I surveyed him. It seemed I had found a brother: one I could be proud of—one I could love; and two sisters, whose qualities were such, that, when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had inspired me with genuine affection and admiration. The two girls, on whom, kneeling