第54章 Chapter 8 (7)

I explained to her the object of a marriage-settlement, and then told her exactly what her prospects were -- in the first place, on her coming of age, and in the second place, on the decease of her uncle -- marking the distinction between the property in which she had a life-interest only, and the property which was left at her own control. She listened attentively, with the constrained expression still on her face, and her hands still nervously clasped together in her lap.

‘And now,' I said in conclusion, ‘tell me if you can think of any condition which, in the case we have supposed, you would wish me to make for you -- subject, of course, to your guardian's approval, as you are not yet of age.'

She moved uneasily in her chair, then looked in my face on a sudden very earnestly.

‘If it does happen,' she began faintly, ‘if I am --'

‘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, The heightening colour spread to her forehead and her neck, and the nervous fingers suddenly clasped themselves fast round the edge of the book.

‘There is some one else,' she said, not noticing my last words, though she had evidently heard them; ‘there is some one else who might like a little keepsake if -- if I might leave it. There would be no harm if I should die first --'

She paused again. The colour that had spread over her cheeks suddenly, as suddenly left them. The hand on the album resigned its hold, trembled a little, and moved the book away from her. She looked at me for an instant -- then turned her head aside in the chair. Her handkerchief fell to the floor as she changed her position, and she hurriedly hid her face from me in her hands.

Sad! To remember her, as I did, the liveliest, happiest child that ever laughed the day through, and to see her now, in the flower of her age and her beauty, so broken and so brought down as this!