"I counted on this sort of thing coming to one of you at a time, you know, and I was fairly ready for your first turn, my dear, before something else happened, which has given me at a stroke enough for you all."
He told her of the legacy, and the share he had mentally appropriated to herself, then added, "As I am a cut-and-dried old bachelor, there will be more for you in the long run."
He was not prepared for what followed.
Gertrude broke into a flood of passionate tears and sobs, and between these she cried, "Dick, dear brother Dick, can you forgive me? I do not deserve anything from you. I have been hard and selfish and ungrateful. I have tried to make the others so, and cared nothing for your happiness, only how I could keep all good things to myself. It was when I learned to love Bertram that I knew what I had done to you."
The girl sank on her knees and hid her tearful face in her hands as she bowed her head over Dick's lap, and her frame shook with sobs.
Love had conquered at last, as he always believed it would, and Richard's face looked beautiful in the moonlight, as he bent over his sister and insisted on raising her from the ground and drawing her head on his breast.
"You do forgive me, Dick. Your kind touch tells me so without words; but please listen, I want you to know everything—" and the girl went on and laid bare all the envy, ingratitude, and selfishness that had begun during that visit to the Tindalls, and how these things had grown and for a long time influenced her life for evil. "Then," she said, "you were so persistently loving that I began to see the beauty of your life and disposition, and to loathe the ugliness of my own—till Norah came."
Richard started at the mention of that name, and Gertrude felt his heart beat fuller and faster.
"No one, not even I, could help loving Norah," she said, "and often I thought what a perfect mate she would be for you, dear Dick; but I could not endure the idea of her coming here as mistress and turning us all out of Mere Side. I thought you cared for her, and she for you, but nothing came of it, only I was glad when she went away, though I expected you and she would soon meet again. You would have done so if you had not set out for Mauritius, for we were invited to the wedding, only we did not go as you were absent."