All that the Farleys had done in changing her environment to one of comfort and decency and educating her in a fashionable school with the daughters of gentlefolk had not affected the blood in her. She had not been worthy of their pity, their generosity, their confidence. Yet it had meant much to these people in their childlessness to take her into their hearts and give her their name. Farley’s ideas of honor had been the strictest; the newspapers in their accounts of his career had laid stress on this. And how he would hate an act such as she meditated, that would prove her low origin, stamp her as the daughter of a degenerate!...
Still, there was no reason why she shouldn’t read the wills. She returned to the table, drew one of them out, played with it for a moment uncertainly, then thrust it back.
It was Nan against Nan through the dark watches of the night. If she yielded now she would never tread firm ground again. Once this trial was over, she would be a different woman—better or worse; and she must reach a decision unaided. She buried her face in her arms to shut out the light and wept bitterly in despair of her weakness....
Four o’clock. A sparrow cheeped sleepily in the vines on the wall outside the window. Farley had liked the sparrows and refused to have them molested. They were “company,” he said, and he used to keep crumbs of bread and cake for them....
She lifted her head, and confidence stole into her heart. She had not done the evil thing; she had not even looked at the sheets of paper that recorded Farley’s wavering, shifting faith in her.
“Why don’t you do it? You are a coward; you are afraid!”
Her voice sank to a whisper as she kept repeating these taunts. Then she was silent for a time, sitting with arms folded, her eyes bent unseeingly upon the envelopes before her. There could be no happiness in store for her if she yielded. She saw herself carrying through life the memory of a lawless act dictated by selfishness and greed. Suddenly she rose and walked to the bed; and her voice rang out with a note of triumph, there in the room where Farley had died:—
“I have not done it; I will not do it!”
The sound of her voice alarmed her, and she glanced nervously over her shoulder. Then she laughed, struck by the thought that if Farley’s spirit lurked there expecting to see her yield, it was a disappointed ghost!
“You silly little fool,” he had often said to her in his anger. Well, she was not so wicked as he had believed; but she thought of him now without bitterness.