But when he went away it was with the reflection that women are surely obstinate creatures; and, however charming they may be, they are, as a rule, quite devoid of reason. Marion had proved immovable in her resolution, as also in her determination not to take advice on it. Once fully assured that the man purporting to be Mr. Singleton's son was really so, her mind was made up what to do. She went back into the garden like one moving in a dream, and told Helen the news.
"The fairy tale is over," she said; "my fairy fortune is about to slip away from me. Am I sorry? I think I am more apathetic just now than either glad or sorry. It has not brought me one day of happiness, but I know the world well enough to be aware that it is better to be rich and unhappy than poor and unhappy. Poverty aggravates every other evil; and yet I am not grieved to have the opportunity to prove that I am not so mercenary as—some people doubtless believe me. Brian Earle will not think that I have schemed for his inheritance when he learns that I have voluntarily given it up to his cousin."
Helen looked up with a keenness of perception which was rather unusual in her soft eyes. "I think," she said, "that that is the consideration which moves you chiefly. But is it altogether a right consideration? Mr. Earle does not injure you by believing what is untrue of you, but you will injure yourself by giving up everything, and surely you are not bound to do so. If Mr. Singleton had not desired you to have part at least of his fortune, he would never have left you all of it."
"One would think you had heard the arguments of the gentleman who has just gone away," said Marion, smiling. "Dear Helen, don't make me go over it all again. I fear that it is more pride than conscience which makes me feel that I must resign the fortune. But I can never recover my own self-respect until I have done so. And my own self-respect is not another name for the respect of Brian Earle. If I were conscious of being right I might not care that he thought ill of me; but my own judgment echoes his. I have been willing to barter everything of value in life for money, and now it is right enough that the money should be taken from me. I feel as if by giving it up altogether I might recover, not what I have lost—I do not dream of that,—but the right to hope for some form of happiness again."
Helen gravely shook her head. "You talk like a pagan," she said. "All this sounds like propitiating gods, and sacrificing to fate, and things of that kind. The fact is, you are trusting entirely to your own judgment in the matter, and that is strange; for there seems to me a point of conscience involved. Either you have a right to a part of this fortune, or you have not. If you have, why should you give it away to a man who does not ask it and does not need it? While if you have not a right, there would be no more to be said about it; you would have the consciousness of some firm ground under your feet, and no reason hereafter for regret."
"Helen, you astonish me!" said Marion, who certainly looked astonished at this unexpected view of the case. "How on earth did you contrive to get at the kernel of the thing in that manner?"
"Why, there is nothing surprising in that," remarked Helen. "It is the way any Catholic would look at it. Things like that never trouble us. There is always a plain right or a plain wrong."
"And where do you find the law or rule by means of which to tell what is right and what is wrong?"
"There is no difficulty in that," was the reply. "We have certain very clear rules given us, and if there is any difficulty in their application we know where to go to have the difficulty solved."
"To a priest, I suppose?"