Both men uttered a sharp exclamation. "Absurd! You must certainly take more than that," said George Singleton.
"Remember that you are giving up half a million," remarked his cousin.
But Marion shook her head. "It is with extreme reluctance," she said, "that I have decided to take anything. Mr. Singleton is aware that my intention yesterday was to keep nothing, but I have been advised to the contrary by one whose opinion I respect; and so I have determined to take what I think your father, under ordinary circumstances, might have given one with no claim upon him, but in whom he had taken an interest."
"But why should you fix upon such a paltry sum?" demanded George Singleton. "There was nothing niggardly about my father. He was cold and hard as an icicle, but he always gave like a prince."
"That would have been a very generous bequest to one who had touched his life as slightly as I had," remarked Marion, "and who had no claim upon him whatever—"
"He calls you his adopted daughter in his will."
"He was very good to me," she replied, simply, while tears came to her eyes. "But I think he only said that to make such a disposition of his fortune seem more reasonable. Your cousin here has perhaps told you, or at least he can tell you, all the circumstances—how your father was disappointed in some one else on whom he had set his heart."
"Brian Earle," said George Singleton, carelessly. "Yes, I know."
"Well, he thought that I had been disappointed too; and so—partly from a generous impulse to atone for the disappointment, and partly from a desire to punish one who had greatly angered him—he made me his heir. But it was all an accident, a caprice, if I may say so; and if he had lived longer he would have undone it, no doubt."
"You did not know my father if you think so," said the son, quietly. "He had caprices perhaps, but they hardened into resolutions that never changed. Who should know that better than I? No, no, Miss Lynde, this will never do! I can not take a fortune from your hands without litigation or any difficulty whatever, and leave you only a paltry ten thousand dollars. It is simply impossible."