Tom Singleton, thus directly appealed to, bent his head. He had not been one of the speakers, and, but for the fact that he had grown very pale, showed little sign of emotion.
"And, foreseeing of course that this disposition of his fortune would cause disappointment," the lawyer went on, "Mr. Singleton was careful to explain to me why he selected Miss Lynde for his heir. It seems that she was for a time engaged to Mr. Brian Earle, whose name occupied in a preceding will exactly the place which hers does here. The engagement was broken in a manner which caused Mr. Singleton to blame his nephew exceedingly, and the young lady not at all. So, as he told me, he determined that she should lose nothing. The fortune which would have been hers had she married Earle—should be hers in any event. This was what he intended; and your disappointment, gentlemen, may be less if you will remember that Mr. Brian Earle is the only person whom this bequest to Miss Lynde deprives of anything."
But, naturally, this was not much comfort to the disappointed heirs. Each one felt that he should by right have taken Brian Earle's place, and that a broken engagement hardly gave Marion Lynde a claim to the fortune which had been bequeathed to her. There were many more angry murmurs, and numerous threats of contesting the will; but the smile with which the lawyer heard these was not very encouraging, nor yet his calm assurance that they could find no better means of throwing away the money which had been left to them.
Finally they all dispersed, and Tom Singleton slowly took his way to the house, where his wife and the fortunate heiress were awaiting him. Never had he been called upon before to perform a duty from which he shrank so greatly. He dreaded the violence of his wife's disappointment, and he felt a repugnance to the task of informing Miss Lynde of her inheritance. The lawyer had asked him to do so, and as one of the executors of the will he could not refuse; but it was a task which did not please him. If this girl, this stranger, had not come into their lives, would not he be in Earle's vacated place? He could not but feel that it was most probable.
It would require a volume to do justice to the feelings which Mrs. Singleton expressed when she heard the terrible news. She had not only lost the fortune—that might have been borne,—but it had gone to Marion Lynde, the girl whom she had discovered and brought to the notice of the infatuated old man who was dead! This was the insupportable sting, and its effect was all that her husband had feared. He had prepared himself for the storm, however; and he bore its outburst with what philosophy he could until Mrs. Singleton declared her intention of going to upbraid Marion with her great iniquity. Here he firmly interposed.
"You will do nothing of the kind," he said. "Miss Lynde is not to blame at all, and you will only make yourself ridiculous by charging her with offenses of which she is not guilty. If she has schemed for this, she concealed the scheming so successfully that it is too late now to attempt to prove it. There is nothing to be done but to make the best of a bad matter, and bear ourselves with dignity. I beg that you will not see her until you feel able to do this. As for me, I must see her at once."
And, in spite of his wife's protest, he did so. When a servant came to Marion with the announcement that Mr. Singleton desired to see her in the drawing-room, she went down without any thrill of excitement whatever. It was as she had imagined, then: the old man had left her a legacy. This was what she said to herself. And vaguely, half-formed in her mind, were the words, "Perhaps ten thousand dollars." She had never dreamed of more than this, and would not have thought of so much had not Mr. Singleton been of a princely habit of giving.
Was it wonderful, then, that the shock of hearing what she had inherited stunned her for a time? She could only gaze at the speaker with eyes dilated by an amazement that proved her innocence of any schemes for or expectations of this end. "Mr. Singleton," she gasped, "it is impossible! There must be some great mistake."
Mr. Singleton faintly smiled. "There is no room for mistake, Miss Lynde," he said. "My uncle has left his fortune to you."