But yet, on some occasions, this brother and sister showed themselves to be true will disputants.

Let tongue and eyes express what they will, Mr. Belford, the first reading of a will, where a person dies worth anything considerable, generally affords a true test of the relations’ love to the deceased.

The clothes, the thirty guineas for mourning to Mrs. Norton, with the recommendation of the good woman for housekeeper at The Grove, were thought sufficient, had the article of 600L. which was called monstrous, been omitted.  Some other passages in the will were called flights, and such whimsies as distinguish people of imagination from those of judgment.

My cousin Dolly Hervey was grudged the library.  Miss Harlowe said, That as she and her sister never bought the same books, she would take that to herself, and would make it up to her cousin Dolly one way or other.

I intend, Mr. Belford, to save you the trouble of interposing—­the library shall be my cousin Dolly’s.

Mrs. Hervey could hardly keep her seat.  On this occasion, however, she only said, That her late dear and ever dear niece, was too glad to her and hers.  But, at another time, she declared, with tears, that she could not forgive herself for a letter she wrote,* looking at Miss Arabella, whom, it seems, unknown to any body, she had consulted before she wrote it and which, she said, must have wounded a spirit, that now she saw had been too deeply wounded before.

* See Vol.  III.  Letter LII.

O my Aunt, said Arabella, no more of that!—­Who would have thought that the dear creature had been such a penitent?

Mr. John and Mr. Antony Harlowe were so much affected with the articles in their favour, (bequeathed to them without a word or hint of reproach or recrimination,) that they broke out into self-accusations; and lamented that their sweet niece, as they called her, was not got above all grateful acknowledgement and returns.  Indeed, the mutual upbraidings and grief of all present, upon those articles in which every one was remembered for good, so often interrupted me, that the reading took up above six hours.  But curses upon the accursed man were a refuge to which they often resorted to exonerate themselves.

How wounding a thing, Mr. Belford, is a generous and well-distinguished forgiveness!  What revenge can be more effectual, and more noble, were revenge intended, and were it wished to strike remorse into a guilty or ungrateful heart!  But my dear cousin’s motives were all duty and love.  She seems indeed to have been, as much as a mortal could be, love itself.  Love sublimed by a purity, by a true delicacy, that hardly any woman before her could boast of.  O Mr. Belford, what an example would she have given in every station of life, (as wife, mother, mistress, friend,) had her lot fallen upon a man blessed with a mind like her own!

The 600L. bequeathed to Mrs. Norton, the library to Miss Hervey, and the remembrances to Miss Howe, were not the only articles grudged.  Yet to what purpose did they regret the pecuniary bequests, when the poor’s fund, and not themselves, would have had the benefit, had not those legacies been bequeathed?