"The poor boy was not in his right mind when he made such a will," the father said. "Why, it is a sinful waste; it is simply throwing thousands of dollars into the river."
"It is all the influence of that Benedict girl," the mother said, in bitterness of spirit.
But the will stood, and its directions were obeyed with all the promptness that the sister to whose trust the work was left, could force her lawyers. She seemed in feverish haste to have the work of destruction go on. And when her mother accused her of being hopelessly under the influence of "that Benedict girl," and having no mind of her own, her answer was:
"Mamma, you are mistaken. At last I am under the influence of One who has a right to own me, body and soul. Poor Louis found Him at last, and yielded to his power, and followed his direction, and it was through Claire Benedict's influence that he did; and, mamma, if he had known Claire Benedict a few years earlier, we should have him with us to-day. Mamma, the time has come for me to speak plainly. Religion has been nothing but a name to me until lately. I have not believed in its power. It is Claire Benedict who has shown me my mistake, and helped me to see Christ as a sufficient Saviour. I belong to him now for time and eternity, and, mamma, I will never marry a man who does not with his whole heart own Christ as his Master, and who is not as intense and fanatical on the temperance question as my brother became."
She had always been strong-willed. The mother had been wont to say, somewhat boastfully, that her oldest daughter resembled her in strength of purpose.
Human nature is a curious study. What Mrs. Ansted would do, had been a matter of extreme solicitude to several people. Mr. Chessney believed that she would make Alice's life miserable; that she would become Claire Benedict's enemy, and injure her if she could, and that she would withdraw her younger daughters from not only Claire's, but their eldest sister's influence, and from the church to which they had become attached.
"I do not mean that she will do this in revenge," he said to Claire, "or that she will really intend to injure anybody. She is one of those persons who can make herself believe that she is doing God's service by just such management as this. I am sorry for Alice and for the young girls. It gives me a sense of relief and joy to remember that Louis is forever safe from pitfalls, and yet sometimes I can not help wishing that he could have lived for a few months longer. He had great influence over his mother. She tried to manage him, and his indolent will allowed himself to be influenced in a wonderful manner, but when he did really rouse, he had great power over his mother."
Mrs. Ansted did none of the things which were feared. Instead, she turned suddenly, and with apparent loathing, from the life which she had heretofore lived. She sent for Claire one morning, greeted her with a burst of tears as her dear child, and declared that had she understood the feeling between Louis and herself nothing would have given her greater joy than to have welcomed her into the family.