She was now putting on the bonnet which made her a widow again, and made her face so deathly white that Hugh was frightened and said to her:
“Forgive me, Mrs. Thornton. It was rude in me to ask that question. Forget it, I beg of you. You are very pale. Can I do anything for you?”
“No,” she answered, faintly. “I am only tired, that’s all, and I must get this business settled before I can rest. I have come to give the money back to Gerard and Alice, and you must help me do it.”
“I don’t quite understand you,” Hugh said. “Do you mean to give away the fortune your husband left you?”
“Yes, every farthing of it. I can never use it. It would not be right for me to keep it. He was angry when he made that will. He did not mean it, and had he lived he would have changed it. That was what troubled him when he was ill and he tried to tell me about it,” and very briefly she repeated what her husband had said to her of his children.
“I did not understand him then, but I do now. He knew I would do right; he trusted me,” she continued, her tears falling so fast as almost to choke her utterance.
“But,” said Hugh, “why give it all? If Mr. Thornton had made his will under different conditions, he would have remembered you. Why not divide equally? Why leave yourself penniless?”
“I shall not be penniless,” Mildred replied. “When I was married Mr. Thornton gave me fifteen thousand dollars for my own. This I shall keep. It will support mother and me, for I am going back to her as soon as all is known. And you will help me? You will tell mother and Bessie and Tom, and everybody, and you will be my friend, just for a little while, for the sake of the days when we played together?”
Her lips were quivering and her eyes were full of tears as she made this appeal, which no man could have withstood, much less Hugh, who would have faced the cannon’s mouth for her then, so great was his sympathy for her.
“Yes, I will do all you wish, but not to-day. The will must be proved first, and you are too tired. I will see to it at once, and then if you still are of the same mind as now I am at your service. Perhaps it will be better to say nothing for a few days.”