“Is there any reason why? is it necessary? must you do it?” he asked. “Miss Heriot, your brother was but a man like others. There may be things he would not have had you see.”
Once more Marjory blushed; but this time more hotly. She drooped her head not to look at him.
“That is what I thought,” she said, very low. Then after a pause, she looked up suddenly in his face. “Mr. Fanshawe, you were his friend; you heard what he said about something to tell me. He thanked God at the last that he had told me, though he had not, you are aware. Do you know what it was?”
“No.” It was a relief unspeakable to him to be able to say this. “I know none of his secrets—if he had any. So far as I am aware, he was irreproachable. I knew nothing of him which you might not have known.”
“Thanks!” she said, with a smile, once more holding out her hand. How grateful she was to him for knowing nothing! “Do you think, if I keep it by me, to refer to in case of need—do you think that would do?”
“Or your uncle might do it,” said Fanshawe.
To his astonishment, she shrank from this suggestion.
“Uncle Charles is very good and kind; but he would be hard upon poor Tom—he was always hard upon him. I must do it, if it has to be done. Must it be done? I am so unwilling to do it, that I cannot trust my own judgment. Oh! why cannot our little treasures, our secrets, our mysteries, be buried with us in our graves?”
“He may have left a will—instructions—something that concerns others,” said Fanshawe, hesitating.
Miss Heriot was not perfect, or an angelical woman. She almost turned her back upon him as she answered coldly,