"Have you left anything to Mary Jaquith--Mary Ashton?" "No!" A spark crept into the dim gray eyes. "So I supposed. Did you know that she was poor, and blind?" There was a pause. "I did not know that she was blind," Miss Dane said, presently. "For her poverty, she has herself to thank." "Yes! she married the man she loved. It was a crime, I suppose. You would have had her live on here with you all her days, and turn to stone slowly." "I brought Mary Ashton up as my own child," Miss Dane went on; and there was an echo of some past emotion in her deathly voice. "She chose to follow her own way, in defiance of my wishes, of my judgment. She sowed the wind, and she has reaped the whirlwind. We are as far apart as the dead and the living." "Just about!" said Mrs. Tree. "Now, Virginia Dane, listen to me! I have come here to make a proposal, and when I have made it I shall go away, and that is the last you will see of me in this world, or most likely in the next. Mary Ashton married a scamp, as other women have done and will do to the end of the chapter. She paid for her mistake, poor child, and no one has ever heard a word of complaint or repining from her. She got along--somehow; and now her boy, Will, has come home, and means to be a good son, and will be one, too, and see her comfortable the rest of her days. But--Will wants to marry. He is engaged to Andrew Bent's daughter, a sweet, pretty girl, born and grown up while you have been sitting here in your coffin, Virginia Dane. Now--they won't take any more help from me, and I like 'em for it; and yet I want them to have more to do with. Will is clerk in the post-office, and his salary would give the three of them skim milk and red herrings, but not much more. I want you to leave them some money, Virginia." There was a pause, during which the two pairs of eyes, the dim gray and the fiery black, looked into each other. "This is a singular request, Marcia," said Miss Dane, at last. "I believe I have never offered you advice as to the bestowal of your property; nor, if I remember aright, is Mary Ashton related to you in any way." "Cat's foot!" said Mrs. Tree, shortly. "Don't mount your high horse with me, Jinny, because it won't do any good. I don't know or care anything about your property; you may leave it to the cat for aught I care. What I want is to give you some of mine to leave to William Jaquith, in case you die first." She then made a definite proposal, to which Miss Dane listened with severe attention. "And suppose you die first," said the latter. "What then?" "Oh, my will is all right, I have left him money enough. But there's no more prospect of my dying than there was twenty years ago. I shall live to be a hundred." "I also come of a long-lived family," said Miss Dane.