"You shall not have one cent of it. The idea of your playing Lady
Bountiful to the Graysons! Pshaw! not a picayune shall you have."
"Oh, sir, it would make me so very happy to aid them. You cannot conceive how much pleasure it would afford me."
"Look here, child; all that sort of angelic disinterestedness sounds very well done up in a novel, but the reality is quite another matter. Mrs. Grayson treated you like a brute; and it is not to be expected that you will have any extraordinary degree of affection for her. Human nature is spiteful and unforgiving; and as for your piling coals of fire on her head to the amount of nine thousand dollars, that is being entirely too magnanimous!"
"I want to make Mrs. Grayson amends, sir. Once, when I was maddened by sorrow and pain, I said something which I always repented bitterly." As Beulah spoke, a cloud swept across her face.
"What was it, child? what did you say?"
"I cursed her! besought God to punish her severely for her unkindness to me. I hardly knew what I was saying; but even then it shocked me, and I prayed God to forgive my passion. I shudder when I remember it. I have forgiven her heartlessness long ago; and now, sir, I want you to give me that money. If it is mine at all, it is mine to employ as I choose."
"Cornelia did not leave the legacy to the Graysons."
"Were she living, she would commend the use I am about to make of it. Will you give me five thousand dollars of it?"
"Oh, Beulah, you are a queer compound! a strange being!"
"Will you give me five thousand dollars of that money tomorrow?" persisted Beulah, looking steadily at him.