"She has taken you up," continued Stanbury, "on altogether a different understanding. You are to her the representative of a family to whom she thinks she owes the restitution of the property which she enjoys. I was simply a member of her own family, to which she owes nothing. She thought it well to help one of us out of what she regarded as her private purse, and she chose me. But the matter is quite different with you."
"She might have given everything to you, as well as to me," said Brooke.
"That's not her idea. She conceives herself bound to leave all she has back to a Burgess, except anything she may save,—as she says, off her own back, or out of her own belly. She has told me so a score of times."
"And what did you say?"
"I always told her that, let her do as she would, I should never ask any question about her will."
"But she hates us all like poison,—except me," said Brooke. "I never knew people so absurdly hostile as are your aunt and my uncle Barty. Each thinks the other the most wicked person in the world."
"I suppose your uncle was hard upon her once."
"Very likely. He is a hard man,—and has, very warmly, all the feelings of an injured man. I suppose my uncle Brooke's will was a cruel blow to him. He professes to believe that Miss Stanbury will never leave me a shilling."
"He is wrong, then," said Stanbury.
"Oh yes;—he's wrong, because he thinks that that's her present intention. I don't know that he's wrong as to the probable result."