"I am sorry for that, Milly," said my father. "I did not like to name it in a letter; but somehow, knowing how your views were changed in so many things, I hoped that those old differences were now only like shadows of a nearly forgotten past."
"What could I do, Stephen?" said my aunt. "You know quite well that all the enmity was on the side of the Denes. You must remember that I did nothing to provoke it. The only fault they could bring against me was, that I inherited what was never theirs, and what my husband had a right to dispose of as he chose."
I did not hear my father's answer; but Aunt Milly spoke again, in that earnest way which proved how she felt all she said.
"No, Stephen, believe me, I have not the smallest feeling of anger or revenge. How could I entertain bitter thoughts in my heart when I remember that, as a disciple of Christ, my love towards my neighbour must not be 'in word; neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth?'"
"Then if one of Edmund Dene's children had come to Denesfield, you would have welcomed him?"
"Most certainly I would. Edmund himself is dead, you know; so there is no brother of my husband's left."
Just then the servants came trooping in as usual to prayers, and the conversation was not resumed. But what I had heard set me thinking of things belonging to that far-away past that my father spoke of, and of the circumstances which made Aunt Milly's husband owner of Denesfield.
He—William Dene—was the younger of two brothers. Their father had run through his inheritance, and left his children almost beggars. There were but the two—Edmund and William. William was adopted by his uncle, a successful merchant, who had been winning great wealth while his brother had squandered his own.
The merchant bought back the old home, rebuilt the house, added to the estates, and passing over his elder nephew, left everything except a few thousand pounds to William Dene, Aunt Milly's husband.
Edmund, disappointed and angry, said bitter things to and of his brother, as well as of my aunt. So they parted—not kindly, or in a brotherly spirit—and met no more on earth. William died abroad, and Aunt Milly inherited all his wealth; and now it seemed as though a wall were built up between Denesfield and the much humbler home where Edmund's widow strove to make her little income suffice to bring up her three boys, and educate them to make their way in the world.