She took life as she found it,
and was delighted with its simplest combinations. He found her
company entirely absorbing and inspiring. He told her, in answer to
her frank interest--she seemed to be interested on her own account,
and not to please him--more about his own life than he had ever
told a human being. She always wanted facts, impressions, details:
"Enlarge that--describe that--tell me some more particulars," were
phrases often on her lips. And he was delighted, too, by the belief
that her explorations into his mind and life pleased and satisfied
her. It dawned on him gradually that she was a woman of rich
experience, and that her tranquillity was an aftergrowth, a
development--"That was in my discontented days," she said once. "It
is impossible to think of you as discontented," he had said. "Ah,"
she said lightly, "I had my dreams, like everyone else; but I saw
at last that one must TAKE life--one can't MAKE it--and accept its
limitations with enjoyment."
One morning, when he was called, the butler gave him a letter--he
had been there about a fortnight--from his aunt. He opened it,
expecting that it was to say that she was ill. He found that it ran
as follows:
"MY DEAR BOY,--I always think that business is best done by letter
and not by conversation. I am getting an old woman and my life is
uncertain. I want to make a statement of intentions. I may tell you
that I am a comparatively wealthy woman; my dear husband left me
everything he had; including what he spent on this place, it came
to about sixty thousand pounds.
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