On the part of Mrs.
Lindsay, this degenerated into a spirit of the most intense hatred and malignity.

To this enmity, however, there were exceptions in the family, and strong ones, too, as the reader will perceive in the course of the story.
Old Lindsay himself, although he mentioned the Goodwins with moderation, could not help feeling strongly and bitterly the loss of property which his children had sustained, owing to this unexpected disposition of it by their uncle.

Here, then, were two families who had lived in mutual good-will and intimacy, now placed fronting each other in a spirit of hostility.

The Goodwins felt indignant that their motives should be misinterpreted by what they considered deliberate falsehood and misrepresentation; and the Lindsays could not look in silence upon the property which they thought ought to be theirs, transferred to the possession of strangers, who had wheedled a dotard to make a will in their favor.

Such, however, in thousands of instances, are the consequences of the _"Opes irritamenta malorum."_ The above facts, in connection with these two families, and the future incidents of our narrative, we have deemed it necessary, for I the better understanding of what follows, to place in a preliminary sketch before our readers..