“Yes, she did,” Harlan agreed. “Yet that’s just what she planned. You may not see it, but it’s as plain to me as if she had written it in her will. And there’s something more than that in it, too.”
“What is it?” Mr. Oliphant inquired skeptically. “What is the something more that’s hidden from every eye but yours?”
Harlan reddened and failed to reply at once;—then he said with a reluctant humour: “I’m afraid she’s played it rather low down on me, sir.”
“What!” Mr. Oliphant stared at him. “You call leaving you five or six hundred thousand dollars playing it rather low down?”
“You’d say it’s a fantastic view, would you, sir?”
“Yes, I believe I should—considerably!”
“Maybe so,” Harlan said. “Yet there seems some ground for it. Grandma knew—that is, I mean she thought—she thought that I had certain hopes about Martha myself, and she told me pretty plainly I’d better keep out of the way. Well, she’s put me in a fine light before Martha, hasn’t she? Here’s Dan, all his life supposed to be the favourite, with great expectations, and now he’s cut off with a shilling, and I get it all! In the eyes of a sympathetic woman who’s always liked him best anyhow, isn’t he the suffering hero, and don’t I play the rôle of the brother that undermined him and supplanted him?”
“That’s nonsense,” his father said a little irritably. “You don’t suppose your grandmother deliberately——”
“I don’t suppose she meant unkindly by me,” Harlan interrupted. “Naturally I don’t suppose my grandmother made me her residuary legatee for the purpose of injuring me. Probably she thought I’d be consoled by what she was leaving me.”
“Oh, Harlan!” his mother cried reproachfully.