“Would you like to read the will?” Rex asked, taking it from under his pillow.
Tom shook his head and said:
“Do you expect Rena to accept you?”
“Why, no, of course not,” Rex answered. “But I shall give her a chance to decline. I can’t earn eighty thousand dollars easier.”
He certainly was demented, with a different kind of craziness from that which had affected him when his fever was on and the eye was after him, and Tom felt disturbed and indignant that Rena was to be made a tool by which Rex was to achieve a fortune, and he said so in plain language, adding that he never thought Rex would do so ungentlemanly a thing, and he did not like it.
Rex laughed good-humoredly and suggested that he had been made a dupe, if not a tool, and turn about was fair play.
“That may be, but I wouldn’t insult Rena, and make her the cat’s paw by which you are to get a fortune. I’d like eighty thousand dollars myself, but I would not hurt Rena’s feelings to get it. No, I wouldn’t!” Tom said, leaving the room and banging the door, while Rex chuckled over what he called his experiment, and read the will again.
Tom’s first impulse was to tell Rena and bid her keep away from Rex till his crazy fancy left him; then the ridiculousness of the affair struck him and he concluded to let matters take their course, knowing she would refuse and thinking it would amuse him to know what Rex said to her and what she said to him. He did not like to quarrel with Rex, who certainly was a little off, and then he had been outrageously fooled, and if it was any satisfaction for him to propose to Rena and be rejected, let him do it and get the money. He deserved something for the way he had been treated. This was Tom’s decision, and he began to look forward with some interest to the result of Rex’s experiment.
The next morning when Rena came and went into Rex’s room, Tom, who was there, made some excuse for going out, and the two were left alone. Rex was propped up on cushions and pillows and Rena sat in a low chair beside him where he could look into her face, which never seemed fairer and sweeter than it did now, awakening in him so keen a regret that she was not for him, that for a few moments he felt that if there were a shadow of a chance to win her he would take that chance and prove a traitor to Tom. She had gathered some wild flowers on her way through the fields and as she gave them to him he held her hand in a firm grasp and said:
“Rena.”