“His worthiness is not the point, but whether he can indemnify you.”
“His worthiness not the point!” cried Caroline, indignantly. “I think it all the point.”
“You misunderstand me; you totally misunderstand me,” exclaimed the Colonel trying hard to be gentle. “I never meant to recommend an unworthy man.”
“You wanted Vaughan,” murmured Mother Carey, but he did not regard the words, perhaps did not hear them, for he went on: “My brother in such a case would have taken a reasonable view, and placed the good of his children before any amiable desire to benefit a—a—one unconnected with him. However,” he added, “there is no reason against writing to him, provided you do not commit yourself.”
Caroline hated the word, but endured it, and the rest of the interview was spent upon some needful signatures, and on the question of her residence at Kenminster, an outlook which she contemplated as part of the darkness into which her life seemed to have suddenly dashed forward. One place would be much the same as another to her, and she could only hear with indifference about the three houses, possible, and the rent, garden, and number of rooms.
She was very glad when it was over, and the Colonel, saying he should go and consult Dr. Lucas, gave her back the keys he had taken from Janet, and said that perhaps she would prefer looking over the papers before he himself did so, with a view to accounts; but he should advise all professional records to be destroyed.
It may be feared that the two executors did not respect or like each, other much the better for the interview, which had made the widow feel herself even more desolate and sore-hearted.
She ran, downstairs, locked the door of the consulting room, opened the lid of the bureau, and kneeling down with her head among all the papers, she sobbed with long-drawn, tearless sobs, “O father! O Joe! how could you bid me live there? He makes me worse! They will make me worse and worse, and now you are gone, and Granny is gone, there’s nobody to make me good; and what will become of the children?”
Then she looked drearily on the papers that lay before her, as if his hand-writing at least gave a sort of nearness. There was a memorandum book which had been her birthday present to him, and she felt drawn to open it. The first she saw after her own writing of his name was—
“‘Magnum Bonum. So my sweet wife insists on calling this possibility, of which I will keep the notes in her book.