“I came to bring you this,” said Helen. “I do not know what it is best to do with it. We brought it out of Fareham with us. Papa always said it was Janey’s fortune. But if it is true, as you say, that he owes people money--yes, I know it is true; he told me so himself--this ought, perhaps, to be taken to pay some of them. As for Janey, she is very little, she does not want much now, and I have a hundred a-year--that will be enough for her and me.’
“Let me see it,” said Sir John, with some eagerness.
Nobody had been allowed to see the papers so long as they remained in the magistrate’s hands. He opened them out with a great deal of interest, shaking one after another out of the case. As he looked at them, opening each in succession, gleams of excitement passed over his face. He made hurried calculations under his breath; there were coupons, vouchers of money invested, many things quite unintelligible to Helen. Sir John’s fingers trembled with eagerness as he turned them over; there were various kinds of excitement and pleasure combined in his survey--pleasure in so much money recovered, for himself as well as his fellow-sufferers, fierce satisfaction in finding the culprit as bad as he hoped, the delight of being able to think and say “I told you so,” all intensifying the pleasure of a new incident after long suspense. The two others looked on with very different feelings. Helen was not alive to the meaning of it all. She stood by even with a kind of consolation and gentle content in the thought that whatever wrong her father might have done would now be partially made up. She did not look at the face with which her lover regarded these discoveries, the disgust and pain and shame on his countenance conveyed no idea to her inexperience. She did not like Sir John, but she thought his exclamations, his looks of cruel elation, were only his disagreeable way of showing pleasure in the recovery of the money. She stood looking on for some time quite calmly. And then she said, “Will you divide it among the poorest people, please? He would have liked that best.”
Sir John broke out with a fierce laugh. “No,” he said rudely, “I cannot do sentimental injustice, Miss Helen. Your father had made a pretty provision for you, I must say; you ought to be obliged to his providence. But for this lucky chance, whoever suffered, he had very well feathered his nest.”