Her eyes shone almost wildly through the tears that stood in them. She changed colour from pale to red, from red to pale; her weakness gave her the guise of impassioned strength.
“Miss Winifred,” said the lawyer very gravely, “do you know that you are guilty of the last imprudence in saying this, of all people in the world, to me?”
“Oh,” she cried, “you are my friend, my old friend! I never remember the time when I did not know you. It is not imprudent, it is my only hope. Think a little of me first, whom you knew long before this will was made. Tell me how I can get out of the bondage of it. Teach me, teach me how to cheat everybody, for that is all that is left to me! how to keep it from them so as best to give it to them. Teach me! for there is no one I can ask but you.”
The lawyer looked at her with a very serious face. Her great emotion, her trembling earnestness, the very force of her appeal, as of one consulting her only oracle, hurt the good man with a sympathetic pain. “My dear,” he said, “God forbid I should refuse you my advice, or misunderstand you, you who are far too good for any of them. But, Miss Winifred, think again, my dear. Are you altogether a free agent? Is there not some one else who has a right to be consulted before you take a step—which may change the whole course of your life?”
Winifred grew so pale that he thought she was going to faint, and got up hurriedly to ring the bell. She stopped him with a movement of her hand. Then she said firmly, “There is no one; no one can come between me and my duty. I will consult nobody—but you.”
“My dear young lady, excuse me if I speak too plainly; but want of confidence between two people that are in the position of”—
“You mean,” she said faintly yet steadily, “Dr. Langton? Mr. Babington, he has no duty towards George and Tom. I love them—how can I help it? they are my brothers; but he—why should he love them? I don’t expect it—I can’t expect it. I must settle this by myself.”
“And yet he will be the one to suffer,” said the lawyer reflectively in a parenthesis. “My dear Miss Winifred, take a little time to think it over, there is no cause for hurry; take a week, take another day. Think a little”—
“I have done nothing but think,” she said, “since you told me first. Thinking kills me, I cannot go on with it; and you can’t tell—oh, you can’t tell how it harms them, what it makes them do and say! Tom”—(here her voice was stifled by the rising sob in her throat) “and all of them,” she cried hastily. “Oh, tell me how to be done with it, to settle it so that there shall be no more thinking, no more struggling!” She clasped her hands with a pathetic entreaty, and looked imploringly at him. And she bore in her face the signs of the struggle which she pleaded to be freed from. Her face had the parched and feverish look of anxiety, its young, soft outline had grown pinched and hollow, and all the cheerful glow of health had faded. The lawyer looked at her with genuine tenderness and pity.
“My poor child,” he said, “one can very well see that this great fortune, which your poor father believed was to make you happy, has brought anything but happiness to you.”