After this, he seems too overcome to continue his reflections, so
goes back to the fatal letter. Every now and then a groan escapes
him, mingled with mournful remarks, and extracts from the sheet in
his hand--

"Poor old Wynter! Gone at last!" staring at the shaking signature at
the end of the letter that speaks so plainly of the coming icy
clutch that should prevent the poor hand from forming ever again
even such sadly erratic characters as these. "At least," glancing at
the half-read letter on the cloth--_"this_ tells me so. His
solicitor's, I suppose. Though what Wynter could want with a
solicitor---- Poor old fellow! He was often very good to me in the
old days. I don't believe I should have done even as much as I
_have_ done, without him... It must be fully ten years since he
threw up his work here and went to Australia!... ten years. The girl
must have been born before he went,"--glances at letter--"'My
child, my beloved Perpetua, the one thing on earth I love, will be
left entirely alone. Her mother died nine years ago. She is only
seventeen, and the world lies before her, and never a soul in it to
care how it goes with her. I entrust her to you--(a groan). To you I
give her. Knowing that if you are living, dear fellow, you will not
desert me in my great need, but will do what you can for my little
one.'"

"But what is that?" demands the professor, distractedly. He pushes
his spectacles up to the top of his head, and then drags them down
again, and casts them wildly into a sugar-bowl. "What on earth am I
to do with a girl of seventeen? If it had been a boy! even _that
_would have been bad enough--but a girl! And, of course--I know