“It is so,” said John. “We must not mince our words. Whatever may have passed between you two, whatever he may have heard or found out, we can say nothing less than that it is most unjust and cruel.”
“Savage, barbarous! I should never have thought it, I should have refused to do it,” his colleague cried, in his high-pitched voice.
“But we have no alternative. We must carry his will out, and we are bound to let you know without delay.”
“This delay is already too much,” she said hurriedly. “Is it something in my husband’s will? Why try to frighten me? Tell me at once.”
“God knows we are not trying to frighten you. Nothing so terrible could occur to your mind, or any one’s, Grace,” said John Trevanion, with a nervous quivering of his voice. “The executioner used to ask pardon of those he was about to— I think I am going to give you your sentence of death.”
“Then I give you—my pardon—freely. What is it? Do not torture me any longer,” she said.
He thrust away his chair from the table, and covered his face with his hands. “Tell her, Blake; I cannot,” he cried.
Then there ensued a silence like death; no one seemed to breathe; when suddenly the high-pitched, shrill voice of the old lawyer came out like something visible, mingled with the flaring of the candles and the darkness all around.
“I will spare you the legal language,” said Mr. Blake. “It is this. The children are all provided for, as is natural and fit, but with this proviso—that their mother shall be at once and entirely separated from them. If Mrs. Trevanion remains with them, or takes any one of them to be with her, they are totally disinherited, and their money is left to various hospitals and charities. Either Mrs. Trevanion must leave them at once, and give up all communication with them, or they lose everything. That is in brief what we have to say.”
She sat listening without changing her position, with a dimness of confusion and amaze coming over her clear gaze. The intimation was so bewildering, so astounding, that her faculties failed to grasp it. Then she said, “To leave them—my children? To be separated from my children?” with a shrill tone of inquiry, rising into a sort of breathless cry.