"You cannot."
"Oh, indeed! Not when I am executor?"
"Certainly not—except with the permission of your fellow-executor."
She fell to pleading.
"Oh, let me—do let me! You know what I want—to square up all the debts and have done with them. I can't sleep for thinking of what we owe you already. Do you know how much it is? Nearly forty thou—"
He checked her with an impatient wave of the hand.
"All the debts will be provided for, of course. The lawyers will adjust those matters."
"I don't trust you," she urged, looking at him less angrily, but still as puzzled and distressed. "I know you have designs to benefit me somehow—unfairly, and because it's me—and if you only knew how I HATED to be benefited—"
"I do—nobody better. That is why I am letting you do a lot of things that won't benefit you, but just the opposite—things you will repent of horribly by-and-by. Knowing your independent spirit, I do not offer my advice—"
"Oh!"