You are welcome to all that
I have done, and to all that I have suffered in your service. The widow
of Professor Lecompte, sir, takes what is justly hers--and takes no
more!"
As she spoke those words, the traces of sickness seemed, for the moment,
to disappear from her face; her eyes shone with a steady inner
light; all the woman warmed and brightened in the radiance of her own
triumph--the triumph, trebly won, of carrying her point, of vindicating
her integrity, and of matching Magdalen's incorruptible self-denial on
Magdalen's own ground.
"When you are yourself again, sir, we will proceed. Let us wait a little
first."
She gave him time to compose himself; and then, after first looking at
her Draft, dictated the second paragraph of the will, in these terms:
"I give and bequeath to Madame Virginie Lecompte (widow of Professor
Lecompt e, late of Zurich) the sum of Five Thousand Pounds, free of
Legacy Duty. And, in making this bequest, I wi sh to place it on
record that I am not only expressing my own sense of Madame Lecompte's
attachment and fidelity in the capacity of my housekeeper, but that
I also believe myself to be executing the intentions of my deceased
father, who, but for the circumstance of his dying intestate, would have
left Madame Lecompte, in _his_ will, the same token of grateful regard
for her services which I now leave her in mine.
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