“We found your treasure-trove, Margaret,” he said, “and have placed the contents in safe keeping at my London bank. It was a most astonishing find. I had no idea that it would prove so valuable. You are a lady of fortune.”
“I do not feel that the money is mine, Mr. Whitwell. It belongs to Mr. Dallington.”
“No; that it certainly does not. It belongs to you. John’s uncle had every right to do what he pleased with his own, and the terms of his will could not have been more explicit than they were. You are his heiress after Mr. Harris, the house and all that was in it being left absolutely to you. I am glad that wall was not destroyed; but the thing that puzzles me is where Captain Dallington got all that money, foreign and English, and why he chose to hide it in a wall, instead of putting it in a bank, or investing it in some way, as any other man would have done. But he was always eccentric. I have been told that even as a boy he was considered strange, and only a little better than an idiot; and I think he must have remained so. But whatever may have been his reason, he was evidently very fond of you. Do not answer me unless you please, Margaret; but I have often wondered whether you know the secret of his life and of yours.”
“No, I do not, and I expect that now I never shall,” said Margaret. “For some reason—and I am sure it was a good one—my grandfather—Mr. Harris—never told me. Only on the evening on which he died he promised that he would; but he was so weak and ill that I begged him to wait until the next day, and the next day he was gone.”
“It cannot be helped, my dear, and it does not matter. You are whatever your life and character make you.”
“And they could not be better,” said Tom, affectionately.
“And it will not matter who you were when you are happily married to my nephew,” continued Mr. Whitwell. “He is so good a fellow that it will be too bad if you keep him waiting longer. His mother is quite out of the question now, I am sure of that. And the best medical authority of the land has declared it to-day, for I met Dr. Stapleton, who told me so. That will be the way out of the difficulty. If you think this money ought to be his, what is yours may be made his, in spite of the Married Women’s Property Act.”
Margaret returned to Yorkshire the next day without seeing John. She rightly judged that it was better so. It was doubtful if John would ask her again to marry him after all his trouble, and especially when he knew the amount of her possessions. But the long railway ride gave her time to think; and by the time she reached the Home her mind was fully made up.
The place had been speedily got into good working condition, and already there were thirty girls who had been sent down from London, in order that they might be prepared for the work that was before them. And there were as many helpers as could possibly be needed. Miss Wentworth, who knew London well, and who had spent her life and her money chiefly in work among women and girls, knew exactly where to find the right women to help, and the girls who would be the most benefited by their ministrations. She had entered into the scheme with enthusiasm, and it was she who was making it a success.
Her large motherly nature made her very sympathetic. If the truth must be told, she already loved every inmate in the Home; but she loved Margaret the most of all, and when the girl laid her head upon her shoulder, and told her all the history of her life, and confided the secret about John, she was most tender and kind.