It had been a very difficult task to tell Mildred’s story to Mrs. Leach and Tom and Bessie, but Hugh had done it so well that the shock was not as great as he had feared it might be. As was natural, Mrs. Leach was the most affected of the three, and within an hour was at Mildred’s bedside, calling her Milly and daughter and kissing the hot lips which gave back no answering sign, for Mildred never knew her, nor any one, until a morning in October, when, waking suddenly from a long, refreshing sleep, she looked curiously about her, and saw the blind woman sitting just where she had sat for days and days and would have sat for nights had she been permitted to do so. Now she was partially asleep, but the words “Mother, are you here?” roused her, and in an instant Mildred was in her mother’s arms, begging for the pardon which was not long withheld.
“Oh, Milly, my child, how could you see me blind and not tell me who you were?” were the only words of reproof the mother ever uttered; then all was joy and peace, and Mildred’s face shone with the light of a great gladness, when Tom and Bessie came in to see her, both very kind and both a little constrained in their manner towards her, for neither could make it quite seem as if she were their sister.
Gerard and Alice took it more naturally, and after a few days matters adjusted themselves, and as no word was said of the past Mildred began to recover her strength, which, however, came back slowly, so that it was November before she was able to see Hugh in her boudoir, where Tom carried her in his arms, saying, as he put her down in her easy-chair, “Are you sure you are strong enough for it?”
“Yes,” she answered, eagerly. “I can’t put it off any longer. I shall never rest until it is done. Tell Hugh I am ready.”
Tom had only a vague idea of what she wished to do, but knew that it had some connection with her husband’s will, the nature of which he had been told by Gerard.
“She’ll never let that stand a minute after she gets well,” Tom had said, but he never guessed that she meant to give up the whole.
Hugh, who had been sent for that morning, came at once, and found himself trembling in every nerve as he followed Tom to the room where Mildred was waiting for him. He had not seen her during her sickness, and he was not prepared to find her so white and thin and still so exquisitely lovely as she looked with her eyes so large and bright, and the smile of welcome on her face as she gave him her hand and said, “We must finish that business now, and then I can get well. Suppose I had died, and the money had gone from Gerard and Alice.”
“I think it would have come back to them all the same,” Hugh replied, sitting down beside her, and wondering why the sight of her affected him so strangely.
But she did not give him much time to think, and plunging at once into business, told him that she wished to give everything to Gerard and Alice, dividing it equally between them.
“You know exactly what my husband had and where it was invested,” she said, “and you must divide it to the best of your ability, giving to each an equal share in the Park, for I think they will both live here. I wish them to do it, for then we shall all be near each other. I shall live with mother and try to atone for the wrong I have done. I have enough to keep us in comfort, and shall not take a cent of what was left me in the will.”