"It was too much to hope that she would be anything else," his aunt broke in, harshly. "Shut your mouth, Hugh; you look like a fool. Think what she might have done with them—she and some of those unspeakable papers."
"Oh, I see! I see!" groaned the young man. "But how awful not to do the very last thing he wanted! Did you ever try to find out what kind of a person she was?"
"She took the money. That was enough," cried Miss Fowler. "She got her share, just as though she had been his legal wife."
Hugh gave her a dazed look. "You don't mean that she was his illegal one? I never—"
"Oh no, no!" Mr. Fowler interposed. "We have no reason to think that she was otherwise than respectable. Maria, you allow most unfortunate implications to result from your choice of words. We know very little, really."
"He met her in Paris when he gave that course of lectures over there. We know that much. And she was an American student—from Virginia, wasn't it? But that was over twenty years ago. Didn't he see her after that?"
"I am sure he did not."
"She wasn't with him when he was knocking about Europe?"
"Certainly not. She came home that very year and married. As her letter states, she was a widow with three children at the time of his death."
"I have always considered it providential that he didn't know she was a widow," observed Miss Maria, primly.