You
understand Lucy is but nineteen, and _cannot_ convey these two
years."
"And Lucy admits this to be true?--You have proof of all this?"
"Proof! I'd take my own affidavit of it. You see it is reasonable, and
what I had a right to expect. Everything tends to confirm it. Between
ourselves, I had quite $2000 of debt; and yet, you see, the good lady
did not leave me a dollar to pay even my honest creditors; a
circumstance that so pious a woman, and one who made so edifying an
end, would never think of doing, without ulterior views. Considering
Lucy as my trustee, explains the whole thing."
"I thought Mrs. Bradfort made you an allowance, Rupert; some $600 a
year, besides keeping you in her own house?"
"A thousand-but, what is $1000 a year to a fashionable man, in a town
like this. First and last, the excellent old lady, gave me about
$5000, all of which confirms the idea, that, at the bottom, she
intended me for her heir. What woman in her senses, would think of
giving $5000 to a relative to whom she did not contemplate giving
_more_? The thing is clear on its face, and I should certainly
go into chancery, with anybody but Lucy."
"And Lucy?--what says she to your views on the subject of
Mrs. Bradfort's intentions?"
"Why, you have some acquaintance with Lucy--used to be intimate with
her, as one might say, when children, and know something of her
character--"This to me, who fairly worshipped the earth on which the
dear girl trod!--"She never indulges in professions, and likes to
take people by surprise, when she contemplates doing them a service--"
this was just as far from Lucy's natural and honest mode of dealing,
as it was possible to be--"and, so, she has been as mum as one who
has lost the faculty of speech.
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