'Marry, hang her, brock!' said the Counsellor, borrowing an
exclamation from Sir Toby Belch; 'just the month in which
Ellangowan's distresses became generally public. But let us hear
what she has done.'

Mr. Protocol accordingly, having required silence, began to read
the settlement aloud in a slow, steady, business-like tone. The
group around, in whose eyes hope alternately awakened and faded,
and who were straining their apprehensions to get at the drift of
the testator's meaning through the mist of technical language in
which the conveyance had involved it, might have made a study for
Hogarth.

The deed was of an unexpected nature. It set forth with conveying
and disponing all and whole the estate and lands of Singleside and
others, with the lands of Loverless, Liealone, Spinster's Knowe,
and heaven knows what beside, 'to and in favours of (here the
reader softened his voice to a gentle and modest piano) Peter
Protocol, clerk to the signet, having the fullest confidence in
his capacity and integrity--these are the very words which my
worthy deceased friend insisted upon my inserting--but in TRUST
always (here the reader recovered his voice and style, and the
visages of several of the hearers, which had attained a longitude
that Mr. Mortcloke might have envied, were perceptibly shortened)
--in TRUST always, and for the uses, ends, and purposes hereinafter
mentioned.'

In these 'uses, ends, and purposes' lay the cream of the affair.
The first was introduced by a preamble setting forth that the