“A copy of my letter,” said Mr. Fowler.

To his sister, watching him as he watched Hugh, came the unaccountable impression that his sure and chiselled surface covered a nervous anxiety.  Then Miss Maria, being a product of the same school, dismissed the idea as absurd.

Hugh raised bewildered eyes from the letters.  “I can’t exactly remember,” he said.  “I was so cut up at the time.  Did I ever actually read this before or was I merely told about it?  I went back for Midyear’s, you know, almost at once.  I know my consent was asked, but—­”

“You—­did not see it.”

“And you, Aunt Maria, of course you knew about it!”

“Certainly,” said Miss Fowler, on the defensive.  “As usual in business matters, your uncle decided for me.  We have been accustomed to act as a family always.  To me the solidarity of the family it more than the interest of any member of it.”

“Oh, I know that the Fowler family is the noblest work of God.”  The young man looked from one to the other as he might have regarded two strangers whose motives it was his intention to find out.  “I’ve been brought up on that.  But what I want to know now is the whyness of this letter.”

“What do you mean?” Mr. Fowler’s voice cut the pause like a trowel executing the middle justice on an earthworm.

“Why—­why—­” Hugh began, desperately.  “I mean, why wasn’t the money turned over to her at once—­all of it?”

“It is customary to notify legatees.”

“And she wasn’t even a legatee,” added Miss Maria, grimly.  He never made a will.”

“No,” said Hugh, with an ugly laugh, “he merely trusted to our promises.”

There was a brief but violent silence.

“I think, Winthrop,” Miss Maria broke it, “that instead of questioning the propriety of my language, you might do well to consider your nephew’s.”

Hugh half-tendered the letter.  “You’re so confoundedly clever.  Uncle Winthrop.  You—­you just put the whole thing up to the poor woman.  I can’t pick out a word to show where you said it, but the tone of your letter is exactly this, ’Here’s the money for you, and if you take it you’re doing an unheard-of thing.’ She saw it right enough.  Her answer is just defence of why she has to take it—­some of it.  She’s a mother with three children, struggling to keep above water.  She’s a human animal fighting for her young.  So she takes, most apologetically, most unhappily, a part of what he left her, and she hates to take that.  It’s the most pitiful thing—­”

“Piteous,” corrected Miss Maria, in a tone like a bite.

Mr. Fowler laid the tips of his fingers very delicately on his nephew’s knee.  “Will you show me the place or places where I make these very damaging observations?”

“That’s just it.  I can’t pick them out, but—­”

“I am sure that you cannot, because they exist only in your somewhat—­shall we say, lyrical imagination?  I laid the circumstances before the woman and she acted as she saw fit to act.  Hugh, my dear boy, I wish that you would try to restrain your—­your growing tendency to excitability.  I know that this is a trying day for all of us.”