“My dear,” she then said suddenly, “what is the matter?”
Sara flushed. “I can’t talk about it,” she said. She made no attempt at denial.
“I don’t really want you to tell me,” said Miss Mason, “because I know. But I think I can find a way out of the difficulty.”
Sara gave a little sad laugh. “If you can you are clever. I’ve thought and thought, and can see none.”
Miss Mason coughed. “It’s all perfectly simple, really,” she said, “only I don’t quite know how to begin to tell you. It seems to me that money is the most difficult thing in the world to talk about.” She took two envelopes from the table. “Will you, my dear, read the contents of those. It seems to me the simplest way.”
Sara took the envelopes—long ones—and drew out the parchment contents. She read slowly. At first she could hardly grasp their meaning, it had been so unexpectedly presented to her.
At last she looked up. Her face was quivering.
“But—but—I simply couldn’t——”
“But, my dear, why not?” said Miss Mason. “Will you look at the whole thing reasonably. If I chose to bequeath certain sums of money to you and Paul at my death I presume you would not feel it incumbent on you to refuse them. Why shouldn’t you accept them now?”
“But——” began Sara again. And she stopped, looking from the documents she held to Miss Mason.