Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/151

Rh and admirable. Then, while my eyes stole to her face, murmured in a low, appealing voice: "If I have faults, you see there is some slight excuse for them; arrogance, vanity, and selfishness being considered in the gay young heiress as no more than so many assertions of a laudable dignity. Ah! ah," she bitterly exclaimed "money alone has been the ruin of us all!" Then, with a falling of her voice: "And now it has come to me with its heritage of evil, and I—I would give it all for— But this is weakness! I have no right to afflict you with my griefs. Pray forget all I have said, Mr. Raymond, or regard my complaints as the utterances of an unhappy girl loaded down with sorrows and oppressed by the weight of many perplexities and terrors."

"But I do not wish to forget," I replied. "You have spoken some good words, manifested much noble emotion. Your possessions cannot but prove a blessing to you if you enter upon them with such feelings as these."

But, with a quick gesture, she ejaculated: "Impossible! they cannot prove a blessing." Then, as if startled at her own words, bit her lip and hastily added: "Very great wealth is never a blessing.

"And now," said she, with a total change of manner, "I wish to address you on a subject which may strike you as ill-timed, but which, nevertheless, I must mention, if the purpose I have at heart is ever to be accomplished. My uncle, as you know, was engaged at the time of his death in writing a book on Chinese customs and prejudices. It was a work which he was anxious to see published, and naturally I desire to carry out his wishes; but, in order to do so, I find it necessary not only to interest myself in the matter now,—Mr.