Thus speaking, Hester rose from her chair and went toward Roger, who had sat as rigid as a stone while she put into words what, as the shadow of a thought, he had tried so hard to fight down.
“I’m done now,” she said. “I’ve told all I know about the will. I hid it, Aleck and me, and I ain’t sorry neither, and I’m ready to go to jail any minit the new lords see fit to send me.”
She started for the door, but came back again to Roger, and, laying her hand on his hair, said soothingly, and in a very different tone from the one she had assumed when addressing Frank or his mother: “Don’t take it so hard, my boy. We’ll git along somehow. I ain’t so very old. There’s a good deal of vim in me yet, and me and Aleck will work like dogs for you. We’ll sell the tavern stand, and you shall have the hull it fetches. Your father give us the money to buy it, you know.”
Roger could not fail to be touched by this generous unselfishness, and he grasped the hard-wrinkled hand, and tried to smile, as he said: “Thank you, Hester, I knew you would not desert me; but I shall not need your little fortune. I can work for us all.”
It was growing dark by this time, and the bell had thrice sent forth its summons to dinner. As Roger finished speaking, it rang again, and, glad of an excuse to get away, old Hester said, “What do they mean by keepin’ that bell a dingin’ when they might know we’d something on hand of more account than victuals and drink. I’ll go and see to’t myself.”
She hurried out into the hall, and Frank shut the door after her, and then came back to the table, and began to urge upon Roger the acceptance of a portion, at least, of the immense fortune, which a few hours before he had believed to be all his own. But Roger stopped him short.
“Don’t, Frank,” he said. “I know you mean it now, and, perhaps, would mean it always, but so long as that clause stands against me, I can take nothing from the Irvings.”
He pointed to the words “the boy known as Roger Lennox Irving,” and Frank rejoined, “It was a cruel thing for him to do.”
“Yes; but a far wickeder, crueller thing, to poison his mind with slanders, until he did it,” Roger replied, as he turned to his sister, and said, “Helen, I hold you guilty of my ruin, if what Hester has told us be true; but I shall not reproach you; I will let your own conscience do that.”
Mrs. Irving tried to say that Hester had spoken falsely, that she had never worked upon the weak old man’s jealousy of his young wife; but she could not quite utter so glaring a falsehood, knowing or believing, as she did, that Magdalen had the letter, which might refute her lie. So she assumed an air of lofty dignity, and answered back that it was unnecessary to continue the conversation, which had been far more personal than the questions involved required,—neither was it needful to prolong the interview. The matter of the will was now between him and Frank, and, with his permission, she would withdraw. Roger simply inclined his head, to indicate his willingness for her to leave, and, with a haughty bow, she swept from the room, signalling to Frank to follow. But Frank did not heed her. He tarried for a few moments, standing close to Roger, and mechanically toying with the pens and pencils upon the table. He did not feel at all comfortable, nor like a man who had suddenly become possessed of hundreds of thousands. He felt rather like a thief, or, at best, an usurper of another’s rights, and would have been glad at that moment had the will been lying in its box under the floor, where it had lain so many years. Roger was the first to speak.