“Oh, Mr. Everard,” she said, “you must always hate me, though I’ll never let it stand. I did not know it. I never dreamed of such a thing. I shall never touch it, never. Don’t hate me, Mr. Everard. Oh, Beatrice, help me,—somebody help me. I believe I am going to die.”
But she was only fainting, and Everard took her in his arms and carried her to an open window in the adjoining room, and giving her to the care of Beatrice, waited to see the color come back to her face and motion to her eyelids; then he returned to the parlor, where Lawyer Russell was examining the document which had done so much harm and made the memory of the dead man odious.
“Everard, this is a very strange affair; a most inexplicable thing,” the lawyer said. “I cannot understand it, or believe he really meant it. I do not wish to pry into your affairs, but as an old friend of the family, may I ask if you know of any reason, however slight, why he should do this?”
“Yes,” Everard answered promptly, “there is a reason; a good one, many would say; and that I was rightly punished. The will is just; I have no fault to find with it. I shall not try to dispute it. The will must stand.”
He spoke proudly and decidedly, with the air of one whose mind was made up, and who did not wish to continue the conversation, and who would not be made an object of pity or sympathy by any one. But when Lawyer Russell was gone, and Beatrice came to him as he sat alone by the dying fire, and putting her hand on his bowed head, said to him:
“I am so sorry, and wish I could help you some way,” he broke down a little, and his voice shook as he replied:
“Thank you, Bee. I know you do, and your friendship and sympathy are very dear to me now, for you know everything, and I can talk to you as to no one else. Father must have been very angry, and his anger reaches up out of his grave and holds me with a savage grip, but I do not blame him much, and, Bee, don’t think there is no sweet with the bitter, for that is not so. It is true I like money as well as any one, and I do not say that I had not to some degree anticipated what it would bring me, but, Bee, with that feeling was another, a shrinking from what would be my plain duty, if I were master here. You know what I mean.”
“You would bring your wife home,” Bee answered, and he continued:
“Yes, that would have to be done, and,—Heaven forgive me if I am wrong,—but I almost believe I would rather be poor and work for her,—she living in Holburton,—than be rich and live with her here. And then, if I must be supplanted, I am so glad it is by Rossie. She takes it hard, poor child; how was she when you left her?”
“Over the faint, but crying bitterly, and she bade me tell you to come to her,” Beatrice replied, and Everard went to Rossie’s room, where she was lying on the couch, her eyes swollen with weeping, and her face very pale.