"What do you mean, auntie?" he begged. "What do you mean?"
"All my money," she sobbed, "all my money has gone! Twenty thousand, all I had, gone, gone, gone!" And she moaned again.
Winn, rising, glanced at the table where only magazines and religious papers lay, and at his aunt, still sobbing at his feet, and then a light came to him. And it must be recorded, a curse as hearty as it was profane rose to his lips, and the name of J. Malcolm Weston was linked with it.
For Winn had known how his aunt had trusted and believed in Weston, and now the outcome of it was plain.
A moment more only did he look at the woe-begone woman at his feet, and then he turned and left the room, and went to his own upstairs.
Many of us in this world do selfish things, a few of us do mean ones; but not to one in a thousand does the chance come to do a heroic one, and when it comes, not one in ten is equal to it. We think, we excuse, we evade, we haggle with our conscience and selfish impulses, and in the end self wins the day.
But Winn, fresh from the island, where simple good will to all men ruled supreme, and the heart-offering of Jess Hutton still warming his own, was in the spirit for heroism. As he sat down to think in his own room, all the years that this good aunt had been a mother to him came back. She was simple, she was over-pious, she believed all to be like herself,—good, kind, and true. And to Winn she had been all that a motherly woman could be.
Only for a moment did he hesitate, and then he wrote a check for the small fortune he owned for a day, and descending the stairs, handed it to his aunt.
"Come, auntie," he said cheerfully, "don't shed any more tears over that accursed Weston. You have been a good mother to me for many years, and here is your money back."
Then he swallowed a lump in his own throat and turned away.