"I had to, you see," Nannie explained, breathlessly; she was very much frightened, far more frightened than when she had told Mr. Ferguson. "I had to, because--because Mamma couldn't. She was ... not alive." Blair suddenly put his hands over his face. "You forged mother's name!" His consternation was like a blow; she cringed away from it: "No; I--just wrote it." "_Nannie!_" "Somebody had to," she insisted, faintly. Blair sprang to his feet and began to pace up and down the room. "This is awful. I haven't a cent!" "Oh," she said, with a gasp, "as far as that goes it doesn't make any difference, except about time. Mr. Ferguson said it didn't make any difference. I'll give it all back to you as soon as I get it. Only you'll have to give it back first." "Nannie," he said, "for Heaven's sake, tell me _straight_, the whole thing." She told him as well as she could; speaking with that minute elaboration of the unimportant so characteristic of minds like hers and so maddening to the listener. Blair, in a fury of anxiety, tried not to interrupt, but when she reached Mr. Ferguson's assertion that the certificate had been meant for David Richie, the worried color suddenly dropped out of his face. "For--_him?_ Nannie!" "No, oh no! It wasn't for David, except just at first--before--not when--" She was perfectly incoherent, "Let me tell you," she besought him. "If I thought she had meant it for him, I would send it to him before night! Tell me everything," he said, passionately. "I'm trying to," Nannie stammered, "but you--you keep interrupting me. I'll tell you how it was, if you'll just let me, and not keep interrupting. Perhaps she did plan to give it to David. Mr. Ferguson said she planned to more than two years ago. And even when she was sick Mr. Ferguson thinks she still meant to." "I'll fight that damned will to my last breath!" he burst out. Following the recoil of disgust at the idea of taking anything--"anything _else_"--that belonged to David Richie, came the shock of feeling that he had been tricked into the sentimentality of forgiveness. "I'll break that will if I take it through every court in the land!" "But Blair! Mamma _didn't_ mean it for him at the last. Don't you see? Oh, Blair, listen! Don't be so--terrible; you frighten me," Nannie said, squeezing her hands hard together in the effort to keep from crying. "Listen: she told me on Wednesday, the day before she died, that she wanted to give you a present. She said, 'I must give him a check.' You see, she was beginning to realize how wrong her will was; but of course she didn't know she was going to die or she would have changed it." "That doesn't follow," Blair said.