One morning, while alone in her chamber, she drew the envelope from the drawer, and was holding it in her hand, hesitating as to whether or not she should open it, when the baby in the next room began to cry.

The child’s cry seemed like a warning, and yielding to a vague uneasiness, she put the paper back.

“Phil,” she said to her husband at luncheon, “Aunt Polly said some strange things to me one day before she died,—­I don’t know whether she was quite in her right mind or not; but suppose that my father had left a will by which it was provided that half his property should go to that woman and her child?”

“It would never have gone by such a will,” replied the major easily.  “Your Aunt Polly was in her dotage, and merely dreaming.  Your father would never have been such a fool; but even if he had, no such will could have stood the test of the courts.  It would clearly have been due to the improper influence of a designing woman.”

“So that legally, as well as morally,” said Mrs. Carteret, “the will would have been of no effect?”

“Not the slightest.  A jury would soon have broken down the legal claim.  As for any moral obligation, there would have been nothing moral about the affair.  The only possible consideration for such a gift was an immoral one.  I don’t wish to speak harshly of your father, my dear, but his conduct was gravely reprehensible.  The woman herself had no right or claim whatever; she would have been whipped and expelled from the town, if justice—­blind, bleeding justice, then prostrate at the feet of slaves and aliens—­could have had her way!”

“But the child”—­

“The child was in the same category.  Who was she, to have inherited the estate of your ancestors, of which, a few years before, she would herself have formed a part?  The child of shame, it was hers to pay the penalty.  But the discussion is all in the air, Olivia.  Your father never did and never would have left such a will.”

This conversation relieved Mrs. Carteret’s uneasiness.  Going to her room shortly afterwards, she took the envelope from her bureau drawer and drew out a bulky paper.  The haunting fear that it might be such a will as her aunt had suggested was now removed; for such an instrument, in the light of what her husband had said confirming her own intuitions, would be of no valid effect.  It might be just as well, she thought, to throw the paper in the fire without looking at it.  She wished to think as well as might be of her father, and she felt that her respect for his memory would not be strengthened by the knowledge that he had meant to leave his estate away from her; for her aunt’s words had been open to the construction that she was to have been left destitute.  Curiosity strongly prompted her to read the paper.  Perhaps the will contained no such provision as she had feared, and it might convey some request or direction which ought properly to be complied with.