“Was ever anything more absurd than to waste five thousand dollars and a house upon that Irish boy and his mother?” she said to herself.  “I don’t suppose it was so much my husband’s fault.  That artful woman got around him, and wheedled him into it.  I know now why she was so willing to come here and take care of him when he was sick.  She wanted to wheedle him into leaving money to her low-lived boy.  She is an artful and designing hussy, and I should like to tell her so to her face.”

The cold and usually impassible woman was deeply excited.  Her selfish nature made her grudge any of her husband’s estate to others, except, indeed, to Godfrey, who was the only person she cared for.  As she thought over the unjust disposition, as she regarded it, which her husband had made of his property, a red spot glowed in her usually pale cheek.

Then it was another grievance that money should have been left to the town.

“What claim had the town on my husband,” she thought, “that he should give it five thousand dollars?  In doing it, he was robbing Godfrey and me.  It was wrong.  He had no right to do it.  What do I care for these people?  They are a set of common farmers and mechanics, with whom I condescend to associate because I have no one else here, except the minister’s and the doctor’s family, to speak to.  Soon I shall be in the city, and then I don’t care if I never set eyes on any of them again.  In Boston I can find suitable society.”

The more Mrs. Preston thought of it, the more she felt aggravated by the thought that so large a share of her husband’s property was to go to others.  She fixed her eyes thoughtfully on the document which she held in her hand, and a strong temptation came to her.

“If this should disappear,” she said to herself, “the money would be all mine and Godfrey’s, and no one would be the wiser.  That Irish boy and his mother would stay where they belonged, and my Godfrey would have his own.  Why should I not burn it?  It would only be just.”

Deluding herself by this false view, she persuaded herself that it was right to suppress the will.  With steady hand she held it to the flame of the lamp, and watched it as it was slowly consumed.  Then, gathering up the fragments, she threw them away.

“It is all ours now,” she whispered, triumphantly, as she prepared to go to bed.  “It was lucky I found the will.”

CHAPTER XXXI MRS. PRESTON’S INTENTIONS

Godfrey returned home on the day after his father’s death.  He had never witnessed death before, and it frightened him, for the time, into propriety.  He exhibited none of the stormy and impetuous grief which a warm-hearted and affectionate boy would have been likely to exhibit.  It was not in his nature.

When he and his mother were left alone, he showed his resemblance to her, by asking: 

“Do you know how much property father left?”