'Did you ever see much of Mr. Burnett?'
'Not since I was a boy, ten or twelve years ago, when I was at the University. There was absolutely no reason for his doing what he did.'
'Yes; there was,' she said in a strangely decisive tone.
'May I ask——'
'I do not know if I ought to tell you. It would be better not to. You know,' she continued, speaking now with a nervous tremor in her voice, 'that I do not want you to think that I am so very disappointed. I do not know that I am disappointed at all. You have acted so generously, and it will be pleasanter to live here with you than with that old man.'
The conversation fell; but the sweet meadow seemed to induce confidences, and they were so happy in their youth and the sorcery of the sunshine. 'Five years ago I wrote to him,' said Hubert, speaking very slowly, 'asking him to lend me fifty pounds, and he refused. Since then I have not heard from him.' At the end of a long silence, the girl said—
'So long as you know that I am no longer angry with him for having disinherited me, I do not mind telling you the reason. Two months before he died he asked me to marry him, and I refused.'
They walked several yards without speaking.
'Do you not think I was right? I was only eighteen, and he was over sixty.'
'It seems to me quite shocking that he could have even contemplated such a thing.'