“I thought I ought to come to see Pauline,” she said, “but I did not suppose I should find you here in the middle of the day.”

“There is something that I’ve got to see Pauline about at once,” he said, “and so I was obliged to come up-town.”

“Nothing has happened?” she said interrogatively.

“No,” he answered, evasively.

But she went on:  “I suppose it’s something in relation to the will; I hope she’s well provided for, poor thing.”

“Sophie,” said her brother, with a change of tone, “You’ll have to hear it some time, and perhaps you may as well hear it now.  It is that that I have come up-town about; there has been some strange mistake made; there is no will.”

“No will!” echoed Sophie, “Why, you told me once—­”

“That he had left her everything.  So he told me twice last year; so I have always believed to be the case.  Since the day he died, the most faithful search has been made; there is not a corner of his office, of his library, of his room, that I have not hunted through.  He was so methodical in business matters, so exact in the care of his papers, that I had little hope, after I had gone through his desk.  I cannot understand it.  It is altogether dark to me.”

“What can have made him change his mind about it, Richard?  Can he have heard anything about last summer?”

“Not from me, Sophie.  But I have sometimes thought he knew, from allusions that he has made to her mother’s marriage, more than once this winter.”

“He was very angry about that, at the time, I suppose?”

“Yes, I imagine so.  The man she married was poor, and a foreigner:  two things he hated.  I never heard there was anything against him but his poverty.”

“How can he have heard about Mr. Langenau?” said Sophie, musingly.

“I think Pauline must have told him,” said Richard.

“Pauline? never.  She is much too clever; she never told him.  You may be quite sure of that.”

“Pauline clever!  Poor Pauline!” said Richard, with a short, sarcastic laugh, which had the effect of making Sophie angry.

“I am willing,” she said, “that she should be as stupid and as good as you can wish—.  To whom does the money go?” she added, as if she had not patience for the other subject.

“To a brother, with whom he had a quarrel, and whom he had not seen for over sixteen years.”

“Incredible!”

“But there had been some sort of a reconciliation, at least an exchange of letters, within these three months past.”

“Ah!”

“And it is in consequence of hearing from him, and being pressed by his lawyer for an immediate settlement of the estate, that I have come up to tell Pauline, and to prepare her for her changed prospects.”

“And what do you propose to advise?” asked Sophie, with a chilling voice.

“Heaven knows, Sophie,” answered her brother, with a heavy sigh.  “I see nothing ahead for the poor girl, but loneliness and trial.  She is utterly unfit to struggle with the world.  And she has not even a shelter for her head.”