think they had even made up their minds what Alethea was
to do with her money before they knew of her being at the point of death,
and as I have said already, if they had thought it likely that Ernest
would be made heir over their own heads without their having at any rate
a life interest in the bequest, they would have soon thrown obstacles in
the way of further intimacy between aunt and nephew.

This, however, did not bar their right to feeling aggrieved now that
neither they nor Ernest had taken anything at all, and they could profess
disappointment on their boy's behalf which they would have been too proud
to admit upon their own. In fact, it was only amiable of them to be
disappointed under these circumstances.

Christina said that the will was simply fraudulent, and was convinced
that it could be upset if she and Theobald went the right way to work.
Theobald, she said, should go before the Lord Chancellor, not in full
court but in chambers, where he could explain the whole matter; or,
perhaps it would be even better if she were to go herself--and I dare not
trust myself to describe the reverie to which this last idea gave rise. I
believe in the end Theobald died, and the Lord Chancellor (who had become
a widower a few weeks earlier) made her an offer, which, however, she
firmly but not ungratefully declined; she should ever, she said, continue
to think of him as a friend--at this point the cook came in, saying the
butcher had called, and what would she please to order.

I think Theobald must have had an idea that there was something behind
the bequest to me, but he said nothing about it to Christina. He was
angry and felt wronged, because he could not get at Alethea to give her a
piece of his mind any more than he had been able to get at his father.
"It is so mean of people," he exclaimed to himself, "to inflict an injury
of this sort, and then shirk facing those whom they have injured; let us
hope that, at any rate, they and I may meet in Heaven." But of this he
was doubtful, for when people had done so great a wrong as this, it was
hardly to be supposed that they would go to Heaven at all--and as for his
meeting them in another place, the idea never so much as entered his
mind.

One so angry and, of late, so little used to contradiction might be
trusted, however, to avenge himself upon someone, and Theobald had long
since developed the organ, by means of which he might vent spleen with
least risk and gre