“Life,” he said aloud to himself, “shall be all orchids now; my work is done. I will build a new house for Brazilian sons, and spend two hundred pounds on stocking it. Well, I can afford it.”
This was about five o’clock. Half an hour later, when he had well examined his flowers, he strolled out Titheburgh Abbey way, and here he met Ernest and his wife, who had been sitting in their favourite spot.
“Well, my dears,” he said, “and how are you?”
“Pretty well, uncle, thank you; and how are you?”
“I? Oh, I am very jolly indeed for an old man; as jolly as an individual who has just bid good-bye to work for ever should be,” he said.
“Why, Reginald, what do you mean?”
“Mean, Dorothy, my dear? I mean that I have wound up my affairs and retired on a modest competence. Ah, you young people should be grateful to me, for let me tell you that everything is now in apple-pie order, and when I slip off you will have no trouble at all, except to pay the probate duty, and that will be considerable. I never quite knew till a week ago how rich I was; but, as I said the other day, everything I have touched has turned to gold. It will be a large fortune for you to manage, my dears; you will find it a great responsibility.”
“I hope you will live many years to manage it yourself,” said Ernest.
“Ah, I don’t know, I am pretty tough; but who can see the future? Dolly, my dear girl,” he went on, in a dreamy way, “you are growing like your mother. Do you know, I sometimes think that I am not far off her now; you see I speak plainly to you two. Years ago I used to think—that is, sometimes—that your mother was dust and nothing more; that she had left me for ever; but of late I have changed my ideas. I have seen,” he went on, speaking in an absent way, as though he were meditating to himself, “how wonderfully Providence works even in the affairs of this imperfect world, and I begin to believe that there must be a place where it allows itself a larger development. Yes, I think I shall find your mother somewhere, Dorothy, my dear. I seem to feel her very near me sometimes. Well, I have avenged her.”
“I think that you will find her, Reginald,” she answered; “but your vengeance is wicked and wrong. I have often made bold to tell you so, though sometimes you have been angry with me, and I tell you so again. It can only bring evil with it. What have we poor creatures to do with vengeance, who do not understand the reason of things, and can scarcely see an inch before our noses?”