Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/120

 16, 1864.] widow, wearing her deep mourning robes and her white cap, the insignia of her bereft condition. Near to her, in robes of mourning as deep, sat the earl’s daughters, Jane, Laura, and Lucy. Lucy the child cried incessantly; Laura ever and anon gave vent to a frantic burst; Jane was tranquil. Tranquil outwardly; and none, save perhaps the countess, suspected the real inward suffering. What with the loss of him, gone from their sight in this world for ever, and the loss of one they knew not how gone, Jane Chesney’s grief was too bitterly acute for outward signs; it lay deeper than the surface.

The Earl of Oakburn and the dowager countess were left in graves side by side each other in the large cemetery; and the solicitor to the Oakburn family was coming in with the wills. A copy of that made by the countess was to be read, because it was known that legacies were left to some of those ladies sitting there. The lawyer, Mr. Mole, was a thin man with a white shirt-frill, who surreptitiously took snuff every three minutes from under his handkerchief.

He solaced himself with a good pinch outside the dressing-room door and went in bowing, two parchments in his hand. Lady Oakburn was not strong enough to get to the apartments below, and the lawyer was received here, as had been arranged. The will of the earl was the one he retained in his hand to read first. He took his seat and opened it.

Lord Oakburn had it not in his power to bequeath much. The estate was charged with the payment of five hundred a year to his eldest daughter, Jane Chesney, for her life; to his second daughter, Laura Carlton, he left his forgiveness; and to his third and fourth daughters, Clarice Beauchamp, and Lucy Eleanor, the sum of three thousand pounds each. Lucy was left under the personal guardianship of his wife Eliza, Countess of Oakburn, who was charged with her education and maintenance; Clarice, when she was found, was to have her home with the countess, if she pleased, and if she did not so please, he prayed his daughter Jane to afford her one. Should it be ascertained that any untoward fate had overtaken Clarice (so ran the words of the will), that she should no longer be living, then the three thousand pounds were to revert to Jane absolutely. A sum of three hundred pounds was to be equally divided at once between his four daughters, “to provide them with decent mourning,” Clarice’s share to be handed over to Jane, that it might be set aside for her.

Such were the terms of the will, as related to the earl’s daughters; the part of it regarding his wife and son (the latter of whom was not born when it was made, though it provided for the contingency) need not be touched upon, for it does not concern us.

When the will was read, Mr. Mole laid it down, took up the copy of that of the dowager countess, and began to read it with scarcely a breath of interval. The old lady, who had plenty of money in her own right, had bequeathed five thousand pounds each to her grandnieces Jane and Lucy Eleanor Chesney. Jane’s five thousand was to be paid over to her within twelve months, Lucy’s was to be left to accumulate until she should be of age, both principal and interest. Neither Laura nor Clarice was mentioned in her will. Even to the last the old countess could not forgive Clarice for attempting to get her own living; neither had she forgiven Laura’s marriage.

To express the sore feeling, the anger, the resentment of Lady Laura at finding herself passed over both by her father and her aunt, would be difficult. She was of a hasty and passionate temper, something like her father, too apt to give way to it upon trifling occasions, but she did not now. There are some injuries, or what we deem such, which tell so keenly upon the feelings that they bury themselves in silence, and rankle there. This was one. Laura Carlton made no remark, no observation; she expressed not a word of disappointment, or said that it was such. One lightning flash of anger, which nobody saw but the solicitor, and outward demonstration was over.

The lawyer took four parcels of bank-notes from his pocket-book, each to the amount of seventy-five pounds. Two of these parcels he handed to Lady Jane, her own and Clarice’s; one to the countess as the share of Lucy; the other parcel to Lady Laura.

And Laura took the notes without a word. Her indignant fingers trembled to fling them back in Mr. Mole’s face; but she did contrive to restrain herself. “He might have left me better off,” she breathed to Jane in the course of the evening; and then she bit her tongue for having said so much.

Jane also had her disappointment; but she had been prepared for it. Not a disappointment as regarded money matters: she was left as well off as she expected to be, and felt grateful to her father for doing so much, and to her aunt for the handsome legacy. Her disappointment related to Lucy. That the child whom she had loved and tended, whom in her heart she believed herself capable of training into the good Christian, the refined