'Yes, my dear young lady; I congratulate you, not only as mistress of Bourhill, but also as mistress of what, to you, must seem a large fortune. Your uncle has left you Bourhill and the sum of ten thousand pounds.'
She received this announcement in silence, but all the colour left her face.
'Oh,' she cried at length, in a voice sharp with pain, 'how wrong! how hard! To live here in such poverty, to be so hard on others, to act a lie. It was that, Mr. Fordyce. Oh, my poor uncle!'
Her distress was keen. It showed itself in her heaving breast, her saddened eye, her drooping lips. She could not realise her own great fortune; she could only think of what it had cost. The lawyer was deeply moved, and yet not surprised. It was natural that a nature so fine, so conscientious, and so true, should see at once the terrible injustice of it all.
'My dear, I must warn you not to dwell on the morbid side. We must admit that it was a great pity, a very great pity, that your poor uncle did not realise the responsibility of wealth, did not even take some comfort for himself from it. But I may tell you it was a great, an inexpressible joy to him to leave it in your hands. I daresay he felt assured, as I do, that, though so young, you would know how to use it wisely.'
It was the right chord to touch. The colour leaped back to her cheek, the light to her eyes, her whole manner changed.
'Oh, I will, I will! God will help me. I will do the work, his work. If only he had told me how he wished it done.'
'I have a letter for you, written by his own hand the day he died; but it is not here. I will bring it when I come from my office at night; and meanwhile, my dear, I would suggest that you should get ready to go. My wife will be here very shortly.'
Immediately thought was diverted into another channel, and a great wistfulness stole over her.
'And what,' she asked in a low voice,—'what will become of Walter?'