her aunt face to face that it was all comprehended, all forgiven. To have had her own trouble add one pang to that death-bed broke Ethel's heart.
Edward Bruce, the husband of her Cousin Fanny, in whose house Ethel was still staying when she had the news, might say, "This is what it is to be a woman." There are times when somebody ought to get into a rage, so Edward Bruce felt, and it was he who raged at the will left by Mrs. Hunter.
"But she never intended the will should stand," Fanny Bruce explained.
"Then why did she make the will?" Edward retorted.
Of course, it was explained that Mrs. Hunter had made the will just after Mr. Hunter's death, when she believed it to be her sacred duty to carry out his lightest wish. It is true that was nine years ago. Ethel from a child of fourteen had grown into a girl of twenty-three. Mrs. Hunter, from being comparatively indifferent to her niece, had come to love her as her own child.
"And why, in Heaven's name, as circumstances had changed, did she not change her will?" demanded Edward Bruce.
"Poor Mrs. Hunter was all the time trying to decide how much she ought to give to that dreadful young man," pleaded Fanny, impelled by irresistible intuition to make clear the motives of the dead woman. "She felt that since he was her husband's namesake he ought to have something. Indeed, she could not get over the feeling that her husband had suggested that he and Ethel should marry. Of course, I do not deny that she ought not to have put it off, but then she expected to live a great many years."
"I do not see why," said the inexorable Edward. "When a man is born into the world, just one thing is known about him, which is, that sooner or later he must die. Yet in spite of the fact that all created things are under the sentence of death, nothing surprises us so much as to have death threaten anyone we love—above all, ourselves."
"Besides," said Fanny tearfully, "she trusted partly to the logic of events."
"Logic of events is good!"
"Oliver Van Voorst might get engaged, he might get married," continued Fanny, "in which case she would have felt free to leave the property to Ethel, just putting the young man's name down for a suitable legacy."
"All that I can understand." said Edward; "but the fact remains that if Mrs. Hunter had destroyed the abominable will that she had made, then had made no other, every cent of her property would be Ethel's to-day."
