He saw that, though very pale, she was now comparatively calm and collected, and as she raised her eyes and tried to smile at him, he realised what a beautiful woman she was.
"Please forgive me for troubling you so much,"-- she said, gently--"I am very sorry! I understand it all now,--I have read David's letter,--I shall always call him David, I think!--and I quite see how it all happened.

I can't help being sorry--very sorry, that he has left his money to me--because it will be so difficult to know how to dispose of it for the best.

But surely a great deal of it will go in these legacies,"-- and she handed him the paper she held--"You see he names you first." Sir Francis stared at the document, fairly startled and overcome by his late friend's generosity, as well as by Mary's naive candour.
"My dear Miss Deane,"-- he began, with deep embarrassment.
"You will tell me how to do everything, will you not ?" she interrupted him, with an air of pathetic entreaty--"I want to carry out all his wishes exactly as if he were beside me, watching me--I think--" and her voice sank a little--"he may be here--with us--even now!" She paused a moment.

"And if he is, he knows that I do not want money for myself at all--but that if I can do good with it, for his sake and memory, I will.
Is it a very great deal ?" "Is it a great deal of money, you mean ?" he queried.
She nodded.
"I should say that at the very least my late friend's personal estate must be between six and seven millions of pounds sterling." She clasped her hands in dismay.
"Oh! It is terrible!" she said, in a low strained voice--"Surely God never meant one man to have so much money!" "It was fairly earned,"-- said Sir Francis, quietly--"David Helmsley, to my own knowledge, never wronged or oppressed a single human being on his way to his own success.

His money is clean! There's no brother's blood on the gold--and no 'sweated' labour at the back of it.