Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/519

511 THE POKTRAIT OF A LADY. 511 poor persons suffering from the malady of which he died ; and of tins portion of the will Lord Warburton was appointed executor. The rest of his property, which was to be withdrawn from the bank, was disposed of in various bequests, several of them to those cousins in Vermont to whom his father had already been so bountiful. Then there were a number of small legacies. " Some of them are extremely peculiar," said Mrs. Touch ett ; " he has left considerable sums to persons I never heard of. He gave me a list, and I asked then who some of them were, and he told me they were people who at various times had seemed to like him. Apparently he thought you didn't like him, for he has not left you a penny. It was his opinion that you were handsomely treated by his father, which I am bound to say I think you were though I don't mean that I ever heard him complain of it. The pictures are to be dispersed ; he has dis- tributed them about, one by one, as little keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to Lord Warburton. And what do you think he has done with his library 1 It sounds like a practical joke. He has left it to your friend Miss Stackpole ( in recognition of her services to literature.' Does he mean her following him up from Rome 1 Was that a service to literature 1 It contains a great many rare and valuable books, and as she can't carry it about the world in her trunk, he recommends her to sell it at auction. She will sell it of course at Christie's, and with the proceeds she will set up a newspaper. Will that be a service to literature 1 " This question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the little interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to submit on her arrival. Besides, she had never been less inter- ested in literature than to-day, as she found when she occasion- ally took down from the shelf one of the rare and valuable volumes of which Mrs. Touchett had spoken. She was quite unable to read ; her attention had never been so little at her command. One afternoon, in the library, about a week after the ceremony in the churchyard, she was trying to fix it a little ; but her eyes often wandered from the book in her hand to the open window, which looked down the long avenue. It was in this way that she saw a modest vehicle approach the door, and per- ceived Lord Warburton sitting, in rather an uncomfortable attitude, in a corner of it. He had always had a high standard of courtesy, and it was therefore not remarkable, under the circumstances, that he should have taken the trouble to come