A look of sharp cunning came into those sunken features.
“I won’t tell. The time isn’t up. He isn’t crazy yet. I won’t help him to bring sons to eat up one half of your inheritance.”
“Mother, remember that you are dying.”
“Not yet, not for years. I’m getting stronger every minute. Don’t you see how I can talk now. When you came, there wasn’t a word in my voice. I shall live to see you and Oakley’s widow rolling in gold. She’s rich.”
“Oakley’s widow—what do you know of her?”
“What do I know? Hadn’t I eyes? Didn’t I watch you when she was married, watch and listen and pick up things? Didn’t I know what was going on in the mind of my own son?”
“O mother, how much misery you might have saved me!” cried the young man in a passion of grief.
“Haven’t I just told you she was dead, your young wife? Didn’t I go down to that cottage, on the Island, to see this widow and learn all about her? Isn’t this kind, when you have been pining and pining about her? I didn’t want to explain that she was dead, and Catharine Lacy alive—it may do mischief yet. It may bring them together, and despoil you of one half the property. He won’t go crazy. When he thought the girl dead, it only made him melancholy; he would not go mad. Let him find her, and all that I have done will go for nothing.”
“Mother, you should be more just to George. He is your husband’s oldest son.”
“He is her son, and I hate them both.”