“If you are married,” I added, helping her out.
“Don’t let him part me from Marian,” she cried, with a sudden outbreak of energy. “Oh, Mr. Gilmore, pray make it law that Marian is to live with me!”
Under other circumstances I might, perhaps, have been amused at this essentially feminine interpretation of my question, and of the long explanation which had preceded it. But her looks and tones, when she spoke, were of a kind to make me more than serious—they distressed me. Her words, few as they were, betrayed a desperate clinging to the past which boded ill for the future.
“Your having Marian Halcombe to live with you can easily be settled by private arrangement,” I said. “You hardly understood my question, I think. It referred to your own property—to the disposal of your money. Supposing you were to make a will when you come of age, who would you like the money to go to?”
“Marian has been mother and sister both to me,” said the good, affectionate girl, her pretty blue eyes glistening while she spoke. “May I leave it to Marian, Mr. Gilmore?”
“Certainly, my love,” I answered. “But remember what a large sum it is. Would you like it all to go to Miss Halcombe?”
She hesitated; her colour came and went, and her hand stole back again to the little album.
“Not all of it,” she said. “There is some one else besides Marian——”
She stopped; her colour heightened, and the fingers of the hand that rested upon the album beat gently on the margin of the drawing, as if her memory had set them going mechanically with the remembrance of a favourite tune.
“You mean some other member of the family besides Miss Halcombe?” I suggested, seeing her at a loss to proceed.