Such was the history of the ten thousand pounds. Here again no difficulty could arise with Sir Percival’s legal adviser. The income would be at the wife’s disposal, and the principal would go to her aunt or her cousin on her death.

All preliminary explanations being now cleared out of the way, I come at last to the real knot of the case⁠—to the twenty thousand pounds.

This sum was absolutely Miss Fairlie’s own on her completing her twenty-first year, and the whole future disposition of it depended, in the first instance, on the conditions I could obtain for her in her marriage-settlement. The other clauses contained in that document were of a formal kind, and need not be recited here. But the clause relating to the money is too important to be passed over. A few lines will be sufficient to give the necessary abstract of it.