But death came too soon for that, and when he died his will was lying among his papers in his private drawer, where it was found by Gerard, who without opening it, carried it to Mildred. There had been a funeral befitting Mr. Thornton’s position and wealth, and he had been taken to Greenwood and laid beside his first wife, and after a few days spent in New York the family came back to their country home, which they preferred to the city. Bessie, Tom and Hugh met them at the station, the heart of the latter beating rapidly when he saw Mildred in her widow’s weeds, and helping her alight from the train, he went with her to her carriage, and telling her he should call in a few days on business, bowed a little stiffly and walked away.
Since drawing the will he had been growing very hard towards Mildred, whose identity he did not believe her husband knew, else he had not married her, and as he went back to his office after meeting her at the station he wondered what Gerard would think of the will, half hoping he would contest it, and wondering how long before something would be said of it to him. It was not long, for the second day after his return from New York, Gerard found it and took it to Mildred.
“Father’s will,” he said, with a sinking sensation, as if he already saw the shadow on his life.
Mildred took the paper rather indifferently, but her face blanched as she read it, and her words came slowly and thick as she said, “Oh, Gerard, I am so sorry, but he did not mean it to stand, and it shall not. Read it.”
Taking it from her, Gerard read with a face almost as white as hers, but with a different expression upon it. She was sorry and astonished, while he was resentful and angry at the man whose dead hand was striking him so hard. But he was too proud to show what he really felt, and said composedly, “I am not surprised. He threatened to disinherit us unless we gave up Bessie and Tom, and he has done so. It’s all right. I have something from mother and I shall be as glad to work for Bessie as Tom will be to work for Alice. It’s not the money I care for so much as the feeling which prompted the act, and, by George,” he continued, as he glanced for the first time at the signatures, Henry Boyd, Thomas J. Leach, Hugh McGregor, “if he didn’t get Tom to sign Alice’s death warrant. That is the meanest of all.”
What more he would have said was cut short by the violent fit of hysterics into which Mildred went for the first time in her life. And she did not come out of it easily either, but sobbed and cried convulsively all the morning, and in the afternoon kept her room, seeing no one but Alice, who clung to her as fondly as if she had been her own mother. Alice had heard of the will with a good deal of composure, for she was just the age and temperament to think that a life of poverty, if shared with the man she loved, was not so very hard, and besides she had in her own right seven hundred dollars a year, which was something, she reasoned, and she took her loss quite philosophically, and tried to comfort Mildred, whose distress she could not understand. Mildred knew by the handwriting that Hugh had drawn the will, and after passing a sleepless night she arose early the next morning, weak in body but strong in her resolve to right the wrong which had been done to Gerard and Alice.
“I am going to see Mr. McGregor,” she said to them when breakfast was over, and an hour or two later her carriage was brought out, and the coachman ordered to drive her to Hugh’s office and leave her there.
CHAPTER XIV.
MILDRED AND HUGH.
Tom was at work that morning on the farm, and as the other clerk was taking a holiday, Hugh was alone when he received his visitor, whose appearance there surprised him, and at whom he looked curiously, her face was so white and her eyes, swollen with weeping, so unnaturally large and bright. But she was very calm, and taking the seat he offered, and throwing back the heavy veil whose length swept the floor as she sat, she began at once by saying:
“You drew my husband’s will?”