CHAPTER IV.
TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT IT.
After the story was finished the husband and wife sat for a long time side by side, in absolute silence. Both pairs of eyes were fixed on the glowing embers in the fire; the wife's reflected back both the lights and the shadows; they were troubled eyes, troubled with possible joy, troubled also with the dark feelings of anger. The husband's, on the contrary, were calm and steady. No strong hope was visiting them, but despair, even disquietude, seemed miles away. Presently the wife's small nervous fingers were stretched out to meet her husband's, his closed over them, he turned his head, met her anxious face, smiled and spoke.
"So it seems on the cards that you might have been rich, Lottie. Well, it was unjust of your father not to have made some provision for your mother and you, but—but—he has long been dead, the whole thing is over. Let it pass."
"Angus! do you know what I should like?" asked his wife.
"No. What?"
"I should like to meet those two men, John and Jasper Harman, face to face, and ask them without the least preamble or preparation, what they have done with my father's real will?"
"Dear Lottie, you must get this strange idea out of your head. It is not right of you to harbor such thoughts of any men."
"I should like to look so hard at them," continued Charlotte, scarcely heeding her husband's words. "I know their eyes would flinch, they would be startled, they would betray themselves. Angus, I can't help it, the conviction that is over me is too strong to be silenced. For years, ever since my mother told me that story, I have felt that we have been wronged, nay, robbed of our own. But when I entered that house to-day and found myself face with my half-brother's daughter, when I found myself in the house that I had been forbidden to enter, I felt—I knew, that a great wrong had been committed. My father! Why should I think ill of my father, Angus? Is it likely that he would have made no provision for my mother whom he loved, or for me? Is it likely that he would have left everything he possessed to the two sons with whom he had so bitterly quarrelled, that for years they had not even met? Is it likely? Angus, you are a just man, and you will own to the truth. Is it likely, that with his almost dying breath, he should have assured my mother that all was settled that she could bring me up well, in comfort and luxury, that Charlotte Harman and I should be friends? No, Angus! I believe my father; he was a good and just man always; and, even if he was not, dying men don't tell lies."
"I grant that it seems unlikely, Lottie; but then, on the other hand, what do you accuse these men of? Why, of no less a crime than forging a will, of suppressing the real will, and bringing forward one of their own manufacture. Why, my dear wife, such an act of villainy would be not only difficult, but, I should say, impossible."