d.
At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed by fate purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that 'misfortunes never come singly,' and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip between the cup and the lip. St. John passed the window reading a letter. He entered.
'Our uncle John is dead,' said he.
Both the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the tidings appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting.
'Dead?' repeated Diana.
'Yes.'
She riveted a searching gaze on her brother's face. 'And what then?' she demanded, in a low voice.
'What then, Die?' he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of feature. 'What then? Why- nothing. Read.'
He threw the letter into her lap. She glanced over it, and handed it to Mary. Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her brother. All three looked at each other, and all three smiled- a dreary, pensive smile enough.
'Amen! We can yet live,' said Diana at last.
'At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before,' remarked Mary.
'Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what might have been; said Mr. Rivers, 'and contrasts it somewhat too vividly with what is.'
He folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out.
For some minutes no one spoke. Diana then turned to me.
'Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries,' she said, 'and think us hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a relation as an uncle; but we have never seen him or known him. He was my mother's brother. My father and he quarrelled long ago.
It was by his advice that my father risked most of his property in the speculation that ruined him. Mutual recrimination passed between them: they parted in anger, and were never reconciled. My uncle engaged afterwards in more prosperous undertakings: it appears he realised a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. He was never married, and had no near kindred but ourselves and one other person, not more closely re
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