“Really, Churton,” I could not help saying, “you seem to forget that you are the youngest son.”
“Not at all. But Robert says the old lady is free.”
“She is not actually bound; but of course she knows what her husband’s wishes were. Robert has always been looked upon as their heir.”
“There is no need to discuss the question,” my husband said. He always had a great dislike to counting for gain on the death of another. “Aunt Briscoe may live twenty years longer,—may live longer than either Churton or I.”
And the subject was dropped. But a strange feeling came over me, that Churton was harbouring secret designs upon the old lady’s property. I said nothing to anybody, and tried to put aside the suspicion as unkind. Yet it came back to me again and again.
“Oh, what a day this has been!” Maimie said, sighing, when I went with the two girls into their bedroom. “I am so tired.”
“I don’t wonder,” I said; and when she had dropped into a chair, I stood by her, stroking the soft flaxen hair.
“Aunt Marion, he wasn’t like that before,” she said, in a different tone.
“Not like what?”
“Like that—like what he is now. He seems so altered.”