'"
The paper in Mr. Blake's hand fluttered.
"You are aware what those wishes are?" said he.
"I steadied his hand while he wrote," was her sad and earnest reply.
Mr. Blake turned with a look of inexpressible deference to his wife.
"Madame," said he "when I urged you with such warmth to join your fate
to mine and honor my house by presiding over it, I thought I was
inviting you to share the advantages of wealth as well as the love of
a lonely man's heart. This paper undeceives me. Luttra, the
daughter-in-law of Abner Blake, not Holman, his son, is the one who
by the inheritance of his millions has the right to command in this
presence."
With a cry she took from him the will whose purport was thus briefly
made known. "O, how could he, how could he?" exclaimed she, running
her eye down the sheet, and then crushing it spasmodically to her
breast. "Did he not realize that he could do me no greater wrong?"
Then in one yielding up of her whole womanhood to the mighty burst of
passion that had been flooding the defenses of her heart for so long,
she exclaimed in a voice the mingled rapture and determination of
which rings in my ears even now, "And is it a thing like this with
its suggestions of mercenary interest that shall bridge the gulf that
separates you and me? Shall the giving or the gaining of a fortune
make necessary the unital of lives over which holier influences have
beamed and loftier hopes shone? No, no; by the smile with which your
dying father took me to his breast, love alone, with the hope and
confidence it gives, shall be the bond to draw us together and make
of the two separate planes on which we stand, a common ground where we
can meet and be happy.
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