"And, if so," Patty repeated, when that wonderful, bewildering day was over, and she and her elder sister were packing for their return to Melbourne in the small hours of the next morning—"if so, we are the heiresses of all those hundreds of thousands that are supposed to belong to our cousin Kingscote. Now, Elizabeth, do you feel like depriving him of everything, and stopping his work, and leaving his poor starved costermongers to revert to their original condition—or do you not?"
"I would not take it," said Elizabeth, passionately.
"Pooh!—as if we should be allowed to choose! People can't do as they like where fortunes and lawyers are concerned. For Nelly's sake—not to speak of mine—they will insist on our claim, if we have one; and then do you suppose he would keep your money? Of course not—it's a most insulting idea. Therefore the case lies in a nutshell. You will have to make up your mind quickly, Elizabeth."
"I have made up my mind," said Elizabeth, "if it is a question of which of us is most worthy to have wealth, and knows best how to use it."
[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
INVESTIGATION.
They did not wait for the next steamer, but hurried back to Melbourne by train and coach, and reached Myrtle Street once more at a little before midnight, the girls dazed with sleep and weariness and the strain of so much excitement as they had passed through. They had sent no message to Mrs. Duff-Scott at present, preferring to make their investigations, in the first place, as privately as possible; and Mr. Brion had merely telegraphed to his son that they were returning with him on important business. Paul was at the house when they arrived, but Mrs. M'Intyre had made hospitable preparations at No. 6 as well as at No. 7; and the tired sisters found their rooms aired and their beds arranged, a little fire lit, gas burning, kettle boiling, and a tempting supper laid out for them when they dragged their weary limbs upstairs. Mrs. M'Intyre herself was there to give them welcome, and Dan, who had been reluctantly left behind when they went into the country, was wild with rapture, almost tearing them to pieces in the vehemence of his delight at seeing them again, long past the age of gambols as he was. Mr. Brion was consoled for the upsetting of his own arrangements, which had been to take his charges to an hotel for the night, and there luxuriously entertain them; and he bade them an affectionate good-night, and went off contentedly to No. 7 under the wing of Paul's landlady, to doze in Paul's arm-chair until that brilliant ornament of the press should be released from duty.
Cheered by their little fire—for, summer though it was, their fatigues had made them chilly—and by Mrs. M'Intyre's ham and chicken and hot coffee, the girls sat, talking and resting, for a full hour before they went to bed; still dwelling on the strange discovery of the little picture behind the mantelpiece, which Mr. Brion had taken possession of, and wondering if it would really prove them to be the three Miss Yelvertons instead of the three Miss Kings, and co-heiresses of one of the largest properties in England.
As they passed the old bureau on their way to their rooms, Elizabeth paused and laid her hand on it thoughtfully. "It hardly seems to me possible," she said, "that father should have kept such a secret all these years, and died without telling us of it. He must have seen the advertisements—he must have known what difficulties he was making for everybody. Perhaps he did not write those names on the picture—handwriting is not much to go by, especially when it is so old as that; you may see whole schools of boys or girls writing in one style. Perhaps father was at school with Mr. Yelverton's uncle. Perhaps mother knew Elizabeth Leigh. Perhaps she gave her the sketch—or she might have come by it accidentally. One day she must have found it—slipped in one of her old music-books, maybe—and taken it out to show father; and she put it up on the mantelpiece, and it slipped down behind, like Patty's opal. If it had been of so much consequence as it seems to us—if they had desired to leave no trace of their connection with the Yelverton family—surely they would have pulled the house down but what they would have recovered it. And then we have hunted the bureau over—we have turned it out again and again—and never found anything."