Strangely enough, yet still consistently with the generosity of her
character, she did not like to pain him by indicating that she did not
understand him. Nay, she nodded pleasantly, as if she wanted him to be
easy, under the satisfaction that he had succeeded in his efforts to
articulate. Yet so far was she from thinking of the importance of the
communication to herself, that she flattered him into the belief that,
as he could now speak so as to be understood, he was in the way of
improving. Alas for the goodness which is evil to the heart that
produces it!
"There are of plants
That die of too much generosity--
Exhaling their sweet life in essences."
Paul would have said that this too was a cropping out of the old causal
strata. In two hours more, David Grierson was dead, and Rachel was left
to mourn for her parent and benefactor.
Now the issues were accumulating. A very short time only was allowed to
elapse before Mr. Ainslie, accompanied by Walter, came to seal up the
repositories; an operation which was gone through in a manner which
indicated that both of them thought they were locking up and making
secure that which would destroy their hopes. They seemed under the
conviction that the will was in the bureau; and if they had been men
otherwise than merely what, as the world goes, are called honest, they
might have abstracted the document; for the generous Rachel never even
looked at their proceedings, grieved as she was at the death of her
father.
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