“Thank you, Tom,” she said faintly.
“You needn’t thank me; it’s I that ought to thank you, I suppose. I might have known you would behave well, for you always did behave well, Winnie. And look here, you must not make yourself unhappy about everybody as you do. George, for instance: I would be very careful of what I gave him, if I were you. Let them go out to their own place again, they will be far better there than here. And don’t give them too much money: enough to buy a bit of land is quite enough for them; and when the boys are big enough to help him to work it, he’ll do very well.” This prudent advice Tom delivered as he strolled, pausing now and then at the end of a sentence, towards the door. He was, perhaps, not very sure that it was advice that would commend itself to Winnie, or that it came with any force from his mouth; nevertheless he had a sort of conviction, which was not without reason, that it was sensible advice. “By the bye,” he added, turning short round and standing in the half dark in the part of the room which was not illuminated by the lamp—“by the bye, I suppose you will have to sell Bedloe, before you can settle with me?”
“Sell Bedloe!” Winifred was startled out of the quiescence with which she had received Tom’s other proposals. “Why should there be any occasion to do that, Tom?”
“My dear,” he said, with a sort of amiable impatience, “how ignorant you are of business! Don’t you see that before you halve everything with me as you promise, all the property must be realised? I mean to say, if you don’t understand the word, sold. That is the very first step.”
“Sell Bedloe?” she repeated. “Dear Tom, that is the very last thing my father would have consented to do. Oh no, I cannot sell Bedloe. He hoped it was to descend to his children, and his name remain in the county; he intended”—
“Do you think he intended to preserve the name of the Langtons in the county, Winnie? You can’t be such a fool as that. And, as I suppose your children, when you have them, will be Langtons, not Chesters”—
She interrupted him eagerly, her face covered with a painful flush. “I am going to carry out my father’s will against his will, Tom; and, oh, I feel sure where he is now he will forgive me. He has heirs of his own name—I mean them to have Bedloe. Where he is he knows better,” she said, with emotion; “he will understand, he will not be angry. Bedloe must be for George.”
Tom came forward close to her, within the light of the lamp, with his lowering face. “I always knew you were a fool, but not such a fool as that, Winnie. Bedloe for George! a fellow that has disgraced his family, marrying a woman that—why, even Hopkins is better than she is; they wouldn’t have her at table in the housekeeper’s room. I thought you were a lady yourself, I thought you knew—why, Bedloe, Winnie!” he seized her by the arm; “if you do this you will show yourself an utter idiot, without any common sense, not to be trusted. If you don’t sell Bedloe, how are you to pay me?” he cried, with an honest conviction that in saying this righteous indignation had reached its climax, and there was nothing more to add.
“Tom,” said Winifred, “leave me for to-night. I am not capable of anything more to-night. Don’t you feel some pity for me,” she cried, “left alone with no one to help me?”
But how was he to understand this cry which escaped from her without any will of hers?