‘She might have given everything to you, as well as to me,’ said Brooke.

’That’s not her idea.  She conceives herself bound to leave all she has back to a Burgess, except anything she may save as she says, off her own back, or out of her own belly.  She has told me so a score of times.’

‘And what did you say?’

’I always told her that, let her do as she would, I should never ask any question about her will.’

‘But she hates us all like poison except me,’ said Brooke.  ’I never knew people so absurdly hostile as are your aunt and my uncle Barty.  Each thinks the other the most wicked person in the world.’

‘I suppose your uncle was hard upon her once.’

’Very likely.  He is a hard man and has, very warmly, all the feelings of an injured man.  I suppose my uncle Brooke’s will was a cruel blow to him.  He professes to believe that Miss Stanbury will never leave me a shilling.’

‘He is wrong, then,’ said Stanbury.

’Oh yes he’s wrong, because he thinks that that’s her present intention.  I don’t know that he’s wrong as to the probable result.’

‘Who will have it, then?’

‘There are ever so many horses in the race,’ said Brooke.  ‘I’m one.’

‘You’re the favourite,’ said Stanbury.

‘For the moment I am.  Then there’s yourself.’

‘I’ve been scratched, and am altogether out of the betting.’

‘And your sister,’ continued Brooke.

’She’s only entered to run for the second money; and, if she’ll trot over the course quietly, and not go the wrong side of the posts, she’ll win that.’

‘She may do more than that.  Then there’s Martha.’

’My aunt will never leave her money to a servant.  What she may give to Martha would come from her own savings.’

’The next is a dark horse, but one that wins a good many races of this kind.  He’s apt to come in with a fatal rush at the end.’

‘Who is it?’

’The hospitals.  When an old lady finds in her latter days that she hates everybody, and fancies that the people around her are all thinking of her motley, she’s uncommon likely to indulge herself a little bit of revenge, and solace herself with large-handed charity.’

‘But she’s so good a woman at heart,’ said Hugh.

‘And what can a good woman do better than promote hospitals?’

’She’ll never do that.  She’s too strong.  It’s a maudlin sort of thing, after all, for a person to leave everything to a hospital.’

‘But people are maudlin when they’re dying,’ said Brooke ’or even when they think they’re dying.  How else did the Church get the estates, of which we are now distributing so bountifully some of the last remnants down at our office?  Come into the next room, and we’ll have a smoke.’

They had their smoke, and then they went at half-price to the play; and, after the play was over, they eat three or four dozen of oysters between them.  Brooke Burgess was a little too old for oysters at midnight in September; but he went through his work like a man.  Hugh Stanbury’s powers were so great, that he could have got up and done the same thing again, after he had been an hour in bed, without any serious inconvenience.