“I’ve been saying that, don’t you know, to my wife, about Miss Kate,” said Sir Charles.
“Oh, you’ve been saying!” cried Stella with a quick movement of impatience. She paused again for a little, and then fixing her eyes upon Mr. Sturgeon, said with some solemnity, “You wish me then, as soon as I have got over the first wonder of it, and being so glad that papa had forgiven me, to go right in his face and upset his last will?”
The rectitude, the pathos, the high feeling that were in Stella’s voice and attitude are things that no ordinary pen could describe. Her father’s old executor looked at her startled. He took off his spectacles to see her more clearly, and then he put them on again. His faculties were not equal to this sudden strain upon them.
“It would not be upsetting the will,” he said.
“Would it not? But I think it would. Papa says a certain thing very distinctly. You may say it is not just. Many people are turning upon me—as if I had anything to do with it!—and saying it is unjust. But papa made all his money himself, I suppose? And if he had a special way in which he wished to spend it, why shouldn’t he be allowed to do that? It is not any vanity in me to say he was fondest of me, Mr. Sturgeon—everybody knew he was.”
Mr. Sturgeon sat silent, revolving many things in his mind. He was one of the few people who had seen old Tredgold after his daughter’s flight; he had heard him say with the calmest countenance, and his hands on his knees, “God damn them!” and though he was an attorney and old, and had not much imagination, a shiver ran through Sturgeon’s mind, if not through his body. Was it as a way of damning her that the old fellow had let all this money come to his undutiful child?
“So you see,” said Stella with grave triumph, as one who feels that she has reasoned well, “I am tied up so that I cannot move. If you say, Will I upset papa’s will? I answer, No, not for all the world! He says it quite plain—there is no doubt as to what he meant. He kept it by him for years and never changed it, though he was angry with me. Therefore I cannot, whom he has trusted so much and been so kind to, upset his will. Oh, no, no! If Katherine will accept a present, well, she shall have a present,” cried Stella with a great air of magnanimity, “but I will do nothing that would look like flying in the face of papa.”
“By Jove! she is right there, don’t-ye-know,” said the heavy dragoon, looking up at the man of law, with great pride in his clever wife.
“I suppose she is—in a kind of way,” Mr. Sturgeon said. He was a humiliated man—he was beaten even in argument. He did not know how to answer this little sharp woman with her superficial logic. It was old Tredgold’s money; if he wanted it to go in a particular way, why should his will be gainsaid? He had wished it to go to Stella, he had remorselessly cut out her sister; the quick-witted creature had the adversary at a disadvantage. Old Tredgold had not been a just or noble man. He had no character or credit to keep up. It was quite likely that he fully intended to produce this very imbroglio, and to make both his daughters unhappy. Not that Stella would make herself unhappy or disturb her composure with feeling over the subject. She was standing against the big chair covered with red velvet in which old Tredgold used to sit. Nobody cared about that chair or had any associations with it; it had been pushed out of the way because it was so big, and the mass of its red cover threw up the figure of Stella before it with her black dress and her fair crisped hair. She was triumphant, full of energy and spirit, a princess come into her kingdom, not a new heir troubled with the responsibilities of inheritance. It would not disturb her that Katherine should have nothing, that poor old Bob Tredgold should starve. She was quite strong enough to put her foot on both and never feel a pang.
“I am perhaps going beyond my instructions,” Mr. Sturgeon said. “Your sister Katherine is a proud young woman, my Lady Stella—I mean my Lady Somers; I doubt if she will receive presents even from you. Your father’s will is a very wicked will. I remarked that to him when he made it first. I was thankful to believe he had felt it to be so after your ladyship ran away. Then I believed the thing would be reversed and Miss Katherine would have had all; and I knew what her intentions were in that case. It was only natural, knowing that you were two sisters, to suppose that you would probably act in some degree alike.”