"It is my duty to make them feel at
home; in short, to - to put the house at their disposal." Here he
found his hat and placed it on his head. "The property is mine now,
you know," he politely explained, turning, with a keen light in his
gray eye, full upon me and overwhelming me with the grand air of a
man who has come unexpectedly into his own. "Mrs. Jeffrey's father
was my younger brother - the story is an old and long one - and the
property, which in all justice should have been divided between us,
went entirely to him. But he was a good fellow in the main and saw
the injustice of his father's will as clearly as I did, and years
ago made one on his own account bequeathing me the whole estate in
case he left no issue, or that issue died. Veronica was his only
child; Veronica has died; therefore the old house is mine and all
that goes with it, all that goes with it."
There was the miser's gloating in this repetition of a phrase
sufficiently expressive in itself, or rather the gloating of a man
who sees himself suddenly rich after a life of poverty. There was
likewise a callousness as regarded his niece's surprising death
which I considered myself to have some excuse for noticing.
"You accept her death very calmly," I remarked. "Probably you
knew her to be possessed of an erratic mind.
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