“I am very sorry, Uncle Jacob, that you are ill, especially as I am full of company just now, and cannot personally give you the attention that you ought to receive,” she said, trying to speak sympathetically, but failing utterly.
“Never mind me, Ellen. Mrs. Mellen seems very kindly disposed, and will, no doubt, do all that is necessary for me. I am sorry to be a burden to you in my misfortune, but you have always been so kind to me, urging me so cordially to come to you at any time, that I thought you would be glad to see your old uncle under any circumstances,” the old man said, regarding her closely while he was speaking.
“I hope you will soon be better,” Mrs. Richards returned, evasively.
She did not think it necessary to tell him that he was no burden, or to say anything to make him feel comfortable and at ease in his trying situation.
She was so deeply disappointed and chagrined on account of the loss of his fortune, and consequently of her share of his million, that it was impossible not to betray something of her feelings.
“Thank you,” he returned, coldly. “Do not allow my condition to cause you any anxiety. I am very comfortable. It is very quiet here, and I shall doubtless do very well.”
“Yes; you will be more quiet here than up at the house, where there are so many people and so much going on,” she replied, eagerly seizing this pretext for keeping him where he was. “And,” she added, “if you need anything, Mrs. Mellen can attend to all your wants.”
After a few more commonplace remarks, she took her departure, feeling quite relieved to have him so easily disposed of. She had nothing to gain now by fawning and flattery, and since his gold was gone, he was no more to her than any other feeble old man, and it would not pay even to pretend what she did not feel.
As she went rustling out of the room and down stairs in her rich attire, her aged and dependent relative lay back in his chair, with a darkening brow and a pale, pained face.
“Money! money! money!” he muttered. “No one is of much account in this world without plenty of the filthy lucre. If I had come here as I used to, with plethoric pockets instead of an empty purse and shabby attire, no one would have been sweeter or more delighted to see ‘dear Uncle Jacob’ than Ellen Richards. And it was just the same with Henry and his family. When I could make them costly presents and shower favors upon them—when I was ‘Jacob Rosevelt, the millionaire’—no trouble was too great, nothing too good for me. It is a cold-hearted, selfish world; no one is to be trusted. But it is a little hard on an old man to find that he must go down to his grave and feel that he is regarded with affection by nobody. Talk of ‘Divine dispensations,’ of ‘tempering the wind to the shorn lamb’—there is no divinity about it, for the adverse winds of the world never blew so coldly on me as at this moment,” he concluded, bitterly; and bowing his head upon his hands, he seemed to lose himself in troubled thought.