Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 199: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

182 | REYNOLDS’ WORKS for the purpose of giving him final instructions with regard to the trust deed. It will perhaps take some little trouble to explain in lucid terms the details of this deed, but the task must be attempted. In the first place Lord Eagledean undertook to lodge the sum of one hundred thousand pounds in his bankers’ hands, to be retained by them for the benefit of EKhzabeth and Francis Paton, and in the trusteeship of Lord Petersheld and Sir John Marston. He apportioned fifty thousand pounds to be the fortune of Francis, together with all the accumulations of interest which might remain for both after the annual deduction of four hundred pounds for their joint maintenance until they should become en- titled to their fortunes. The deed provided that should either die, the other was to become entitled to the whole amount, and that should they both die, the amount was to revert to himself (the Marquis of Eagledean) or to his heirs. In respect to the fortune of Elizabeth, he introduced the following provisions into the deed: that if on the attainment of her twenty-first year, she contracted a marriage with some eligible and proper person, who by his rank and social position could place her upon a high standing, and confer upon her an honourable name, she was at once to receive possession of her fortune, but that so long as she remained unmarried, she was merely to receive the interest, the capital remaining in the bankers’ hands. Or again, if she contracted a marriage which in the opinion of her two guardians was derogatory and unworthy, she should still receive only the _interest of the money, without any power over the capital; and on no account was the fortune to be settled on her hus- band, or alienated from her own possession. In respect to Francis, the Marquis of Eagledean provided by the trust deed that on the attainment of his twenty-first year, he should become possessed of the full annual interest of his fortune; but that he should not enter upon the enjoyment of the capital until the attainment of his twenty-fifth year. Moreover, the bankers were charged not to pay over the respective fortunes without receiving at the time satisfactory proof that the above-mentioned conditions were duly com- plied with. “Such was the nature of the trust deed drawn up, and which, as a matter of course, was far more explicit in its details than the sketch which I have just given. It neces- Gomicbooks.co