She rose, drew on her kimono, snapped on all the lights and found that it was only half-past one. She assured herself that she would not open the door of Farley’s room; and yet, the thought kept recurring that no one would ever know if she read those wills and destroyed them. The fear that she might yield chilled her. She became frantic for something to do and set herself the task of putting the drawers of her desk in order. Some letters that Mrs. Farley had written her while she was at boarding-school caught her eye.
Yes, the Farleys had been kind, even foolishly indulgent. She read in her foster-mother’s even, old-fashioned hand:—
Don’t worry about your money, dear. I suppose when you go into town you see a lot of little things that it’s nice for a girl to have. We want you to appear well before the other girls. I’m slipping a twenty-dollar bill into this letter just for odds and ends. Don’t say anything to papa about it, as I would rather he didn’t know I send you money.
A little later she turned up a letter of Farley’s in which he had enclosed a fifty-dollar bill as an addition to her regular allowance. In a characteristic postscript he enjoined her not “to tell mamma. She thinks you have enough money and it might make her jealous!”
She closed the drawer, leaving it in worse confusion than before. Comforts and luxuries were dear to her. She had enjoyed hugely her years at boarding-school. To be set adrift with a small income while the greater part of Farley’s money went to philanthropy—maybe Billy was right, after all!...
Two o’clock. She was in Farley’s room, crouched in a low rocker with her arms flung across the table in which the papers were hidden. Her heart beat furiously, and her breath came in quick gasps. She had decided now to read the wills; it would do no harm to have a look at them. If everything was to be taken away from her, she might as well know the worst and prepare for it.
Her fingers sought the catch that released the spring; the top turned easily. The papers lay as she had left them the night Farley died. She folded the open ones and thrust them into their envelopes. She counted them deliberately; there were six, including the one that had fallen from the dressing-gown, which she identified by the crosses on the envelope....
If there should be no will, Copeland had said, all the property would go to her as the only heir. There was a grate in the room with the fuel all ready for lighting. It would be a simple matter to destroy all the wills. She could explain the burnt-out fire to the maid by saying that the house had grown cold in the night and that she had gone into Farley’s room to warm herself. She was surprised to find how readily explanations covering every point occurred to her. The very ease with which she thought of them appalled her. No doubt it was in this fashion that hardened criminals planned their defense....
She struck a match and touched it to the paper under the kindling. The fire blazed brightly. She was really chilled and the warmth was grateful. As she held her hands to the flames she surveyed the trifles on the mantel and her gaze wandered to a portrait of Mrs. Farley which had been done from photographs by a local artist after her death. The memory of her foster-mother’s simple kindliness and gentleness gave her a pang. She turned slowly until her eyes rested upon the bed in which Farley had suffered so long. She went back to the beginning and argued the whole matter over again.
As at other times, in moods of depression, she thought of the squalor of her childhood; of her father, Dan Corrigan, trapper, fisherman, loafer, brutal drunkard. She gazed at her white, slim fingers and recalled her mother’s swollen, red hands as she had bent for hours every day over the wash-tub. Her mother had been at least an honest woman, who had addressed herself uncomplainingly to the business of maintaining a home for her children.