“I have done nothing but think,” she said, “since you told me first. Thinking kills me, I cannot go on with it; and you can’t tell--oh, you can’t tell how it harms _them_, what it makes them do and say! Tom”--(here her voice was stifled by the rising sob in her throat) “and all of them,” she cried hastily. “Oh, tell me how to be done with it, to settle it so that there shall be no more thinking, no more struggling!” She clasped her hands with a pathetic entreaty, and looked imploringly at him. And she bore in her face the signs of the struggle which she pleaded to be freed from. Her face had the parched and feverish look of anxiety, its young, soft outline had grown pinched and hollow, and all the cheerful glow of health had faded. The lawyer looked at her with genuine tenderness and pity. “My poor child,” he said, “one can very well see that this great fortune, which your poor father believed was to make you happy, has brought anything but happiness to you.” She gave him a little pathetic smile, and shook her head; but she was not able to speak. “Then, Miss Winifred,” he said cheerfully, “since you are certain that you don’t want it, and won’t have it, and have made up your mind to do nothing but scheme and plot to frustrate the will, even when you are seeming to obey it,--I think I know a better way. Write down what you mean to do with the property, and leave the rest to me.” She looked at him, roused by his words, with an awakening thrill of wonder. “Write down--what I mean to do? But that will make me helpless to do it; that will risk everything; or so you said.” “I said true. Nevertheless, if you are sure you wish, at the bottom of your heart, to sacrifice yourself to your brothers”-- She shook her head half angrily, with a gesture of impatience. “To give them back their rights.” “That means the same thing in your phraseology. If that is what you really wish, do what I say, and leave the rest to me.” She looked at him for a moment, bewildered, then rose up hastily and flew to the writing-table. How easy it was to do it! how blessed if only it were possible to throw this weight once for all off her shoulders, and be free! CHAPTER XIX