“Thank you, Bee. I know you do, and your friendship and sympathy are very dear to me now, for you know everything, and I can talk to you as to no one else. Father must have been very angry, and his anger reaches up out of his grave and holds me with a savage grip, but I do not blame him much, and, Bee, don’t think there is no sweet with the bitter, for that is not so. It is true I like money as well as any one, and I do not say that I had not to some degree anticipated what it would bring me, but, Bee, with that feeling was another, a shrinking from what would be my plain duty, if I were master here. You know what I mean.” “You would bring your wife home,” Bee answered, and he continued: “Yes, that would have to be done, and,—Heaven forgive me if I am wrong,—but I almost believe I would rather be poor and work for her,—she living in Holburton,—than be rich and live with her here. And then, if I must be supplanted, I am so glad it is by Rossie. She takes it hard, poor child; how was she when you left her?” “Over the faint, but crying bitterly, and she bade me tell you to come to her,” Beatrice replied, and Everard went to Rossie’s room, where she was lying on the couch, her eyes swollen with weeping, and her face very pale. She _was_ taking it hard,—her sudden accession to riches, and when she saw Everard she began sobbing afresh as if her heart would break. “Please go away,” she said to Beatrice, “I want to see him alone.” Beatrice complied, and the moment she was gone Rosamond began to tell Everard how impossible it was that she should ever touch the money left her in a fit of anger. “It is not mine,” she said. “I have no shadow of right to it, and you must take it just the same as if that will had never been. Say you will, or I believe I shall go mad.” But Everard was as immovable as a rock, and answered her: “Do you for a moment think my pride, if nothing else, would allow me to touch what was willed away from me? Never, Rossie. I would rather starve; but I shall not do that. I am young and strong, and the world is before me, and I am willing to work at whatever I find to do, and shall do so, too, and make far more of a man, I dare say, than if I had all this money. I am naturally indolent and extravagant, and very likely should fall into my old expensive habits, and I don’t want to do that. I am so glad you are the heiress; so glad to have you mistress here in the old home. You will make a dear little lady of Forrest House.” He spoke almost playfully, hoping thus to soothe and quiet her, for she was violently agitated, and shook like a leaf; but nothing he said had any effect upon her. Only one thing could help her now. She felt that she had unwittingly been the means of wronging Everard, and she never could rest until the wrong was righted, and his own given back to him. “I’ll never be the lady of Forrest House,” she said, energetically. “I shall give it back to you, whether you will take it or not. It is not mine.”