subject, Randolph said quietly: "I thought your guardian perhaps a
little less frank and communicative to-day."
"Yes," said the young girl suddenly, with a certain impatience, and
yet in half apology to her companion, "of course. He--THEY--all and
everybody--are much more concerned and anxious about my new position
than I am. It's perfectly dreadful--this thinking of it all the time,
arranging everything, criticising everything in reference to it, and the
poor man who is the cause of it all not yet at rest in his grave! The
whole thing is inhuman and unchristian!"
"I don't understand," stammered Randolph vaguely. "What IS your new
position? What do you mean?"
The girl looked up in his face with surprise. "Why, didn't you know? I'm
the next of kin--I'm the heiress--and will succeed to the property in
six months, when I am of age."
In a flash of recollection Randolph suddenly recalled the captain's
words, "There are only three lives between her and the property."
Their meaning had barely touched his comprehension before. She was the
heiress. Yes, save for the captain!
She saw the change, the wonder, even the dismay, in his face, and her
own brightened frankly. "It's so good to find one who never thought of
it, who hadn't it before him as the chief end for which I was born! Yes,
I was the next of kin after dear Jack died and Bill succeeded, but
there was every chance that he would marry and have an heir. And yet the
moment he was taken ill that idea was uppermost in my guardian's mind,
good man as he is, and even forced upon me. If this--this property
had come from poor Cousin Jack, whom I loved, there would have been
something dear in it as a memory or a gift, but from HIM, whom I
couldn't bear--I know it's wicked to talk that way, but it's simply
dreadful!"
"And yet," said Randolph, with a sudden seriousness he could not
control, "I honestly believe that Captain Dornton would be perfectly
happy--yes, rejoiced!--if he knew the property had come to YOU."
There was such an air of conviction, and, it seemed to the simple girl,
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