"Exactly." The girl's answer was firm and determined.
The colour fled from Chris's face, and a cold light came into his eye; his jaw stiffened.
"You must use your own judgment, Norma," he answered, with a displeased shrug.
"I'll leave with you, or send you, my power of attorney," the girl went on, "and you and Hendrick as executors must do whatever you think right and just—just deposit the money in the bank!"
"I see," Chris said, noncommittally.
"And there's another thing," Norma went on, with heightened colour. "I don't want either Leslie or Aunt Annie ever to know—what you and I know!"
Chris looked at her, frowning slightly.
"That's impossible, of course," he said. "What are they going to think?"
"They'll think nothing," Norma said, confidently, but with anxious eyes fixed on his face, "because they'll know nothing. There'll be no change, nothing to make them suspect anything."
"But—great God! You don't seem to understand, Norma. Proofs of your birth, of your rightful heritage, your identity, the fact that you are Theodore's child, must be shown them, of course. You have inherited by Aunt Marianna's will the bulk of her personal fortune, but besides this, as Theodore's child, you inherit the Melrose estate, and Leslie must turn this all over to you, and make such restitution as she is able, of all income from it which she has received since Judge Lee and I turned it over to her on her eighteenth birthday."