"He never truly loved me," thought Kathleen. "He married my fortune, and I married and almost worshipped an ideal being, the creature of my own imagination, until the scales fell from my eyes, and I knew. Yet how happy we might have been, with so many blessings to make life and home bright and free from the anxious cares which spoil so many wedded lives!"
Many particulars of her husband's past were mercifully hidden from Kathleen, but his embarrassments could not be concealed. All the ready money was gone, and ten thousand pounds obtained by mortgaging the estates had followed, and arrangements were in progress for a similar advance. The fact that some difficulty had occurred to retard their completion had moved Mr. Torrance to try and extort from Kathleen the sum saved for her boy. As her former guardian, Aylmer Matheson was the fittest person to act on her behalf, and as far as possible he saved her trouble and anxiety in business matters. Ralph also proved a comfort in the first period of her sorrow. He was full of loving thought, and all that was best in his character showed itself towards her and the brother, of whom he had formerly been unreasonably jealous.
Kathleen's goodness to the once lonely boy bore fruit after many days, and gave her a dutiful son in the manly youth, outwardly so like his father, but happily unlike him in other respects. Ralph was now nearly eighteen, and for several years past had improved greatly both in character and appearance. That he grieved deeply for the loss of his father goes without saying.
Mr. Torrance had left no valid will. One had been prepared by his instructions in an hour of compunction, or, perhaps, when the doctor's warnings, and the memory of Kathleen's unbounded trust, had moved him to do what conscience told him was only just. But it had never been signed. A superstitious feeling, a change of mood, or the determination to hold his power as a sort of weapon over his wife's head, had kept Mr. Torrance from completing his will, which, without his signature, was only so much waste paper.
Ralph did not at first realize his position.
"Shall you stay at the Hall, mother?" he asked. "It will seem large and lonely for you, and, from what Mr. Matheson says, the income will be too small to keep the same establishment. Still, it has always been your home."
"You forget, Ralph dear. It is not mine now, it is yours. The property was not settled on me. It became your father's absolutely, by my deed of conveyance, and you, his elder son, are his heir."
"You cannot be in earnest, mother. It would be horribly wicked in me to allow it. I shall give it straight back to you, and after you it ought to go to Kenneth, that is, if you wished him to have it, for the property is yours, first of all, to keep or to give. I am sorry, so sorry, mother dear, that it is sadly lessened, and you can only live very plainly here."
"I should not wish to live here in any case, Ralph. I could not if I would. And you, dear boy, have no power, however much you may wish it, to give my old home back to me. You are barely eighteen, and until you are of age you can do nothing. Three years hence—"
"I shall be of age, and I will do what is right by you and my brother," interposed Ralph, quickly.