"Perhaps his father, my uncle Richard, expected it would be left to him?"
"No, Isaac. We talked of that. Only in the event of my having no children of my own would the property have become his. Richard will take his share as one of my younger children. You are the eldest. I shall at once settle this money upon him; you have read to that effect in the letter; so that he will have enough for comfort whatever part of the world he may choose to remain in."
Isaac mechanically cast his eyes on the letter, still in his hand.
"I have disclosed these facts to him now for his own comfort," resumed Mr. Thornycroft. "It may bring him a ray of it to find Cyril was not his brother."
Isaac thought it would. He folded the letter and returned it to his father.
"There is one thing I wished to ask you, sir, and I may as well ask it now. You do not, I presume, think of running more cargoes."
"Never again," said Mr. Thornycroft. "Richard was the right hand of it, and he is gone. That's over for ever. But for him it would have been given up before. And there's Kyne besides."
Isaac nodded, glad to have the matter set at rest. "May I tell Mary Anne what you have disclosed to me?"
"Yes, but no one else. She may be glad to hear Richard is not her brother."
How glad, the justice little thought. It seemed to Mary Anne as if this news removed the embargo she had self-imposed upon her marriage with Robert Hunter. Perhaps she had already begun to question the necessity of it--to think it a very utopian, severe decision. In the revulsion of feeling that came over her, she laid her head down on Isaac's shoulder with a burst of tears, and told him all. Isaac smiled.