In the meantime, and while the suit was pending, the conduct of Alice was both generous and disinterested.  She pressed her parents to allow her, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, to renounce the bequest, inasmuch as she thought that Mr. Hamilton’s relatives had a stronger and prior claim.  This, however, they peremptorily refused to do.

“I care not for money,” said her father, “nor have I much to spare; but you must consider, my dear Alice, that the act upon the part of Mr. Hamilton was a spontaneous demise of his own property, as a reward to you on behalf of his daughter, for the affection which you bore her, and which subsisted between you.  You were her nurse, her friend, her sister; you tended her night and day during her long illness, even to the injury of your health, and almost at the risk of your very life.  Suppose, for instance, that Mr. Hamilton had had male heirs; in that case, the Lindsays would have been just as they are, perhaps not so well; for he might not have left them even a legacy.  Then, they unjustly tax us with fraud, circumvention, and the practice of undue influence; and, indeed, have endeavored to stamp an indelible stain upon your character and honor.  Every man, my dear, as the proverb has it, is at liberty to do what he pleases with his own, according to his free will, and a reasonable disposition.  Let me hear no more of this, then, but enjoy with gratitude that which God and your kind friend have bestowed upon you.”

We need not assure our readers that the Lindsays henceforth were influenced by an unfriendly feeling toward the Goodwins, and that all intercourse between the families terminated.  On the part of Mrs. Lindsay, this degenerated into a spirit of the most intense hatred and malignity.  To this enmity, however, there were exceptions in the family, and strong ones, too, as the reader will perceive in the course of the story.

Old Lindsay himself, although he mentioned the Goodwins with moderation, could not help feeling strongly and bitterly the loss of property which his children had sustained, owing to this unexpected disposition of it by their uncle.  Here, then, were two families who had lived in mutual good-will and intimacy, now placed fronting each other in a spirit of hostility.  The Goodwins felt indignant that their motives should be misinterpreted by what they considered deliberate falsehood and misrepresentation; and the Lindsays could not look in silence upon the property which they thought ought to be theirs, transferred to the possession of strangers, who had wheedled a dotard to make a will in their favor.  Such, however, in thousands of instances, are the consequences of the

     "Opes irritamenta malorum."

The above facts, in connection with these two families, and the future incidents of our narrative, we have deemed it necessary, for I the better understanding of what follows, to place in a preliminary sketch before our readers.