“I’m appealing to your good sense, Nan; in a few hours it will be too late, and if you know where he kept his papers, you can easily look them over and satisfy yourself as to just what he meant to do; and then you can do as you like. His last will would stand; maybe you don’t know that; and if it’s in the house, why shouldn’t you, at least, have a look at it?”
“I wouldn’t—I couldn’t do such a thing!” she cried.
“If there shouldn’t be any will at all,” he resumed, with his eyes fixed upon her intently, “then you would inherit everything! The adoption made you his child in law; there wouldn’t be any way of escaping that. It’s these wills that you’ve got to fear—the whims, the sudden vindictive anger of an old man who really meant to do the right thing by you. Neither he nor his wife had any near kin; there would be nobody to share with you in case there proves to be no will at all!”
“You make it perfectly plain what it would be possible for me to do!” she replied with quivering lips. “That seems to be all you have to say—and it’s enough! I want you to leave this house, and be quick about it!”
“But, Nan, you are taking this all wrong! It’s not as though you were robbing other people: you certainly have a better right to the money than anybody else. Suppose that in one of his mental lapses he had willed the greater part of his fortune to some silly charity; all the rest of your days you’d be sorry you hadn’t done what you could to protect yourself.”
“Please go,” she urged in a plaintive whisper, “so I can forget that you’ve been here!”
“Of course I’ll go,” he assented. “If I hadn’t felt that you looked to me at least as a friend, I shouldn’t have come. And if there’s anything to be done it must be done quickly—that’s as plain as daylight.”
He advanced this in a crisp, businesslike tone, as though there were nothing remarkable in his suggestions. She was already wondering, as he meant she should, whether, after all, there was anything so enormous in the idea. Fear stole into her heart; it would be unsafe to listen to anything further lest he persuade her of the justice of his plan. But he dropped the matter instantly, wisely calculating that he had said enough.
“You know, Nan, that nobody is as interested in your happiness as I am. If I didn’t care so much—if I didn’t hope that you cared, I shouldn’t have come here to-night; I shouldn’t have dared!”
She made no response, but stared at him with widely distended eyes. Her silence made him uneasy. Her black gown had strangely transformed her. She was not the Nan who had promised to marry him—who would now, but for his folly, be his wife. He walked to the door and then said in the low tone he had employed from the beginning,—