"O papa!"
She spoke the words now almost reproachfully, in reproach that he could ever think it.
"Yes, I shall do it, Sara. And yet," he added, his voice insensibly sinking to a whisper, "I have heavy need for money just now, and the help these thousands would be to me no one but myself knows."
Sara was silent. A shiver passed over her face at the allusion. She did not dare reply to it. The subject was too painful; and, besides, she was kept partially in the dark.
"But I cannot tamper with my conscience," resumed Dr. Davenal. "Were I to take this money, it would only lie like a weight upon it for my whole future life. I believe--and, Sara, I wish you to believe it and treasure it as an assured truth--that money appropriated by ourselves, which in point of right, of justice, belongs to others, never comes home to us with a blessing. However safely the law may give it us and the world deem our claim to it legitimate, if we deprive others of it, whose it is by every moral and--may I say it?--divine right, that money will not bless us or our children. Sara, I speak this from the experience of an observant life."
"I am sure you are right, papa," she murmured. "Do not keep this money."
"I shall not. But, Sara,"--and Dr. Davenal stopped in his walk, and his voice grew solemn in its tone as he laid his hand upon her--"things have changed with me. I cannot now foresee the future. I thought I was laying up a competency for my children; not a great one, it is true, but one that would have kept them above the extreme frowns of the world. This I have had to fling away--my hard-earned savings. It may be that I shall now have to leave you, my cherished daughter, to the world's mercy; perhaps--I know not--compelled to work for your living in it. Should this come to pass, you will not cast back a reflection on your dead father, and reproach him for a rejection of these thousands."
The tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her pleading hand, her loving look, was his first answer. "You could not keep the money, papa. It would not be right in God's sight. Do not hesitate."
"I have not hesitated, Sara. My mind has been made up from the first. But I preferred to speak to you."
Neal came forward to summon Dr. Davenal. His patients were waiting for him. Sara turned to rejoin her aunt.