The landlady attempted to retrieve her error.
“Considering her humble origin, I should hope she’d spend her life henceforth as an offering to her distinguished husband’s memory.” This conversation had taken place on a winter’s evening, but that was not the reason why Mrs. Taite’s teeth chattered.
“Ah, no doubt—for a year or so. Mearely, himself, was a great stickler for form, and he trained her in the niceties of observance. Her origin—that is to say, the butter pats and so on—is a forgotten myth in Roseborough now.”
“Among the men, perhaps.”
“A forgotten myth, Mrs. Taite. Mearely put the quietus on it by his will. He left her everything. I drew it up, you know. Yes; he was in the pink of condition at the time—the very pink. Whoever thought he would go to his last account not three months later?” He mused on this so long that Mrs. Taite, anxious to get to the terms of the will and learn the worst she had to fear, put in a remark to bring him back to the theme.
“Cholera Morpheus, was it not?”
“Morbus, Mrs. Taite, morbus—a latin word meaning—er. Yes. Poor dear Mearely said to me: ‘I am a healthy man and the Mearelys are a long-lived family. I except to see ninety and bury my wife a dozen years earlier, as my grandfather did before me. However, we are all mortal and subject to climate and accident. I may die to-morrow and leave Mrs. Mearely a widow. I wonder, ought I make the proviso that she must lose all my fortune, if she marries again? What would you advise?’”
“And what did you advise, Judge Giffen?” Mrs. Taite trembled.
“Ah, a really remarkable thing! I advised against it, and he didn’t do it.”
“What a calamity!” Mrs. Taite cried out in spite of herself, and hastened to add: “Leaving her at the mercy of fortune hunters.”