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If it ’s about the thing I ’ve been speaking of, I ’d rather hear it in your voice.

(reads)

“My dear Jane, the doctor tells me I have n’t long to live, and so I ’m doing this, the meanest thing I think I ’ve ever done to you. I ’m leaving you the Jordan money. Since my husband died, there has been just one person I could get to care about; that ’s Ben, who was my baby so long after all the others had forgotten how to love me, And Ben ’s a bad son, and a bad man. I can’t leave him the money; he ’d squander it, and the Jordans’ money came hard.”

Poor woman! It was a bitter thing for her to have to write like that.

“If squandering the money would bring him happiness, I ’d face all the Jordans in the other world and laugh at them, but I know there ’s only just one chance to save my boy,—through a woman who will hold out her heart to him and let him trample on it, as he has on mine.”

(in sudden fear)

Jane!

“Who ’d work, and pray, and live for him, until as age comes on, and maybe he gets a little tired, he ’ll turn to her. And you ’re that woman, Jane; you ’ve loved him ever since you came to us. Although he does n’t even know it. The Jordan name is his, the money ’s yours, and maybe there ’ll be another life for you to guard. God knows it is n’t much I ’m