You will see by the will, of which we enclose you copy, that Mr. Winthrop Bradley bequeathed to you $100,000--in bonds of the ---- Co., which bear 4-1/2 per cent. interest, and in addition his lands in ---- and ---- Counties, North Carolina, which aggregate about 12,000 acres, and of which a part has been farmed on shares for a number of years past, bringing in an annual income varying between $75 and $250 above the taxes on the whole tract. We shall be pleased to receive any instructions you desire to give us in the premises. We remain, Yours very respectfully, SEARS, BRADLEY AND SEARS. [ROGER'S TELEGRAM TO ME] News of will forwarded in packet from office. More glad than can say, deserve it all. Cold wave here and shall take noon express Thursday. Sail Saturday. R. B. CHAPTER XIV THE ISLAND COTTAGE I have hitherto said nothing about the Bank, for the best of reasons--I hate it. I hated it, I think, from the day when a letter from one of my father's friends introduced me to it, until the day when the letter from the legal firm of which Roger's uncle had been the brilliant head released me from it. I do not think, however, that many people knew this. I did my work as well as I could, accepted my periodical advances in salary with a becoming gratitude, saved a little each year, and quieted my eruptions of furious disgust with the recollection of my mother's unhindered disposal of her little legacy since the day I left the university. If anyone had told me that on a day in early autumn I should suddenly come into a thousand pounds a year and freedom, I should have caught my breath at the very idea, and here was the thing, a fact accomplished, and here was I, not only quite self-contained, but sober beyond my wont, and ready to take the Bank and all its stodgy horror upon my shoulders, if with it I might have had one thing--one woman! The world was before me, where to choose, all the far corners and reaches for which I had inherited the hunger with the blood that ran in my veins--and if I might only have been the first to find one lonely, insignificant point on the Atlantic coast, my heart would have journeyed there, content, and ceased (or so I thought) its wanderings. Truly our joys are tempered for us, and no shorn lamb was ever more carefully protected from the winds of heaven than we from too much joy. It is an actual fact that I regarded my resignation from the drudgery of twelve years, the disposal of my rooms and furniture, the heartening preliminaries with the lawyers, and my booking at the steamship company's offices, with less interest than the successful transportation of Margarita's wedding gift.