Rhoda started to go.
'I must not stay now; but then I shall trust to you entirely, Mr. Tapeall,' she said. 'You will always tell me what to do? Promise me that you will.'
'Perhaps, under the circumstances,' said Mr. Tapeall, hesitating, 'it might be better if you were to take some other opinion.'
'No, no,' said the girl, 'there is no division between us. All I wish is to do what is right, and to carry out dear George's wishes.'
It is not the place here to enter into details which Mr. Tapeall alone could properly explain. It was after an interview with him that Dolly wrote to Rhoda:—'Mr. Tapeall tells me of your generous offer, dear Rhoda, and that you are ready to give everything up sooner than go to law. Do not think that I am not glad that you should have what would have been yours if you had married my brother. I must always wish what he wished, and I write this to tell you that you must not think of me: my best happiness now is doing what he would have liked.'
To Dolly it seemed, in her present morbid and over-wrought state, as if this was a sort of expiation for her hardness to Rhoda, whom George had loved, and indeed money seemed to her at that time but a very small thing, and the thought of Church House so sad that she could never wish to go back to it. And Robert's letters seemed to grow colder and colder, and everything was sad together.
Frank came to see her one day before she left London; he had been and come back, and was going again with fresh supplies to the East; he brought her a handful of dried grass from the slope where George had fallen. Corporal Smith had shown him the place where he had found the poor young fellow lying. Frank had also seen Colonel Fane, who had made all inquiries at the time. The date of the boy's death seemed established without doubt.
When Frank said something of business, and of disputing the will, Dolly said,—'Please, please let it be. There seems to be only one pain left for me now—that of not doing as he wished.' People blamed Raban very much afterwards for having so easily agreed to give up Miss Vanborough's rights.
The storm of indignation, consternation, is over. The shower of lawyers' letters is dribbling and dropping more slowly. Mrs. Palmer had done all in her power, sat up all night, retired for several days to bed, risen by daybreak, gone on her knees to Sir Thomas, apostrophised Julie, written letter after letter, and finally come up to town, leaving Dolly at Henley Court. Dolly was in disgrace, direst disgrace. It was all her fault, her strange and perverted obstinacy, that led her to prefer others to her own mother. The Admiral, too, how glad he would have been of a home in London. How explain her own child's conduct? Dear George had never for one instant intended to leave anything but his own fortune to Rhoda. How could Dolly deny this? How could she? Poor Dolly never attempted to deny it. Sir Thomas had tried in vain to explain to his sister that Dolly had nothing whatever to do with the present state of the law. It was true that she steadily refused to put the whole thing into Chancery, as many people suggested; but Rhoda, too, refused to plead, and steadily kept to her resolution of opposing everything first.
'Painful, indeed, very painful,' said Mr. Stock, 'but absolutely necessary under the circumstances; otherwise I should say' (with a glance at poor pale Dolly), 'let it go, let it go, worm and moth, dross, dross, dross.'