Mr. Johnson, who had been one of the trustees for Mrs. Wilkins's marriage
settlement, a respectable solicitor in the county town, and Mr. Ness, had
been appointed executors of his will, and guardians to Ellinor. The will
itself had been made several years before, when he imagined himself the
possessor of a handsome fortune, the bulk of which he bequeathed to his
only child. By her mother's marriage-settlement, Ford Bank was held in
trust for the children of the marriage; the trustees being Sir Frank
Holster and Mr. Johnson. There were legacies to his executors; a small
annuity to Miss Monro, with the expression of a hope that it might be
arranged for her to continue living with Ellinor as long as the latter
remained unmarried; all his servants were remembered, Dixon especially,
and most liberally.
What remained of the handsome fortune once possessed by the testator? The
executors asked in vain; there was nothing. They could hardly make out
what had become of it, in such utter confusion were all the accounts,
both personal and official. Mr. Johnson was hardly restrained by his
compassion for the orphan from throwing up the executorship in disgust.
Mr. Ness roused himself from his scholarlike abstraction to labour at the
examination of books, parchments, and papers, for Ellinor's sake. Sir
Frank Holster professed himself only a trustee for Ford Bank.
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