“Yes, I drew it,” he answered curtly, and not at all prepared for her next question, which seemed to arraign him as a culprit.
“Why did you do it?” and there was a ring in her voice he could not understand.
“Why did I do it?” he repeated. “Don’t you know that lawyers usually follow their client’s wishes in making their wills?”
“Yes, but you might have dissuaded him from it. You knew it was wrong.”
“You don’t like it then?” he asked, but repented the question when he saw the effect upon her.
Rising to her feet and tugging at her bonnet strings as if they choked her, she looked steadily at him and said:
“Don’t like it? What do you take me for? No, I don’t like it, and if I had found it first, I think,—I am sure I should have torn it to pieces.”
She had her bonnet off, and was tossing it toward the table as if its weight oppressed her. But it fell upon the floor, where it might have lain if Hugh had not picked it up, carefully and gingerly, as if half afraid of this mass of crape. But it was Milly’s bonnet, and he brushed a bit of dust from the veil, and held it in his hand, while she pushed back her hair from her forehead, and wiping away the drops of perspiration standing there went on:
“Do you know why he made such a will?”
“I confess I do not. I expressed my surprise at the time, but he was not a man to be turned from his purpose when once his mind was made up. May I ask why he did it?” Hugh said, and Mildred replied: