It was a hopeless sort of business, and the sudden gust of uncontrollable rage died away into a fit of utter dejection.
“Yes, Ash,” he exclaimed, as he was again forced down upon a chair, “you’ve found me. I should have made it all right myself, in a little while. I was making arrangements for that very thing.”
“Make it right, Robert?” exclaimed Ashbel Norton. “You make it right? I won’t speak of the money you’ve wasted or the family you have disgraced. I won’t say anything of the way you ruined yourself and tried to ruin others! Make it right? Can you make it right with Lydia, for all she has suffered, or with your own wife?”
“Ashbel,” huskily replied the now drooping and trembling Major, “don’t speak of my wife. I saw her death in the papers, years ago.”
“And she died of a broken heart,” interrupted Ashbel.
“But Lydia,” continued the Major, “I can do something for her. I’ve kept every paper and——”
“Robert,” exclaimed Ashbel, “Lydia, too, is dead, and that, also, is on your own conscience.”
“Lydia dead? That, too, on me?” half vacantly responded the Major. Whatever may have been on his “conscience,” just then, if indeed he still kept any such thing about him, his mind was grasping at a very different idea, for his next question was:
“And did she leave a will?”
“Indeed she did,” replied Ashbel, half angrily. “You’ve no chance there. Judge Danvers has a copy of it in his safe.”