"Left to me?" exclaimed the doctor. "Her money left to me! Nonsense!"
"It is indeed," affirmed Mr. Wedderburn. "After the legacies are paid you take everything--you are residuary legatee."
"You are joking," said the doctor. "What have I to do with the money? I have no right to it."
With some difficulty Dr. Davenal was convinced that he, and he alone, was named the inheritor. It did not give him pleasure. Quite the contrary; he saw in it only a good deal of trouble and law business, which he much disliked at all times to engage in.
Richard Davenal was one of those thoroughly conscientious men--and there are a few such in the world--who could not be content to enjoy money to which another has more right. It was a creed of his--it is not altogether an obsolete one--that money so enjoyed could not bring pleasure in the spending, or good in the end. Lady Oswald had legitimate relations, who had looked for the money, who needed the money, needed it with a far deeper need than Dr. Davenal, and who possessed a claim to it, so far as relationship could give it them. Even as the conviction slowly arose to him that the news was true that he had been made the inheritor, so there arose another conviction, or rather a resolution, with it,--that he would never accept the money, that it should go over to its legitimate owners, no matter what trouble it involved. A resolution from which he never swerved.
Never. Not even in the moment when a tempter's voice arose within him, whispering how well this legacy would serve to replace that great sum, the savings of years, which he had been obliged to part with only that very week. Partly to satisfy a debt of which until then he had known nothing, had he parted with it; partly as hush-money, to keep down that terrible secret whispered to him on the Sunday night. The thought certainly did arise--that it almost seemed as if this money had been sent to him to replace it; but he did not allow it to obtain weight. It would have been simply impossible for Dr. Davenal to act against his conscience.
"I shall refuse the legacy," he remarked to Mr. Wedderburn. "I have no right to it."
"What did you say?" asked the lawyer, believing he did not properly catch the words.
"I shall not accept this money. It is none of mine. It ought to be none of mine. It must go to Lady Oswald's relatives."
"But it is yours, Dr. Davenal. It is bequeathed to you in the will."