“Yes,” replied the Dominé, more gravely still.
“You will, won’t you?”
“Let me ask you another question: Why don’t you give it to Gerard, then?”
She faced him. “Because I can’t,” she said. “Don’t ask me, father. It isn’t mine to give.”
“Ursula, that would be exactly my standpoint. Property is never ours; we are God’s stewards. And if I became owner of this great estate—God forbid, child, God forbid!—I should hardly deem it right to disannul my responsibilities by abandoning them to another man.”
“You think the property is better in other hands?” cried Ursula, eagerly.
“I do not wish to say that of Gerard,” replied the Dominé, gently. “Responsibility changes character; even the reckless Alcibiades felt as much. Still, I cannot help observing, Ursula, in what a marvellous, I might well say miraculous, manner the estate has passed away from Gerard, to fall into your hands. Surely, if ever man can trace Divine interference, it is here. No, Ursula, inexplicable as the course of events would be to me, I see God’s action in them too plainly to venture on resistance. Never should I dare, child, to return the estate to Gerard. God, in prolonging your child’s frail life for those few minutes, God himself took it from him.”
Ursula fell back to the door. “And afterwards?” she stammered. “Afterwards?”
“The afterwards is God’s. It is only when every soldier plays general that God’s war goes wrong. But, dear girl, you are young; I am old; we are all, young and old, in His hands.”
“Let me go away, father,” gasped Ursula, putting out her hands as if to keep him from her. “It is near midnight. I must go home. The servants won’t understand.”