Mrs. Leward to Frank.

My dearest Boy, I havn't had the heart to write to you before. I knew I should begin about my sorrow at your going away again, and I don't like to give you pain, you have suffered enough already and will suffer much more I fear when you read this letter. Poor grandmamma was dreadfully grieved at your departure, especially as you could not say good-bye to her, she knew then that she would never see you again. She became ill from the day she heard you were gone and took to her bed from which it pleased God she should not get up again. She suffered a good deal at first, and Aunt Jane sent for page 84us before the end of November and we Papa and I were with her to the last. She was taken from us, sleeping peacefully a few minutes after twelve o'clock at night on Christmas Eve. Just as the village church bells began ringing for Christmas there came the most beautiful smile on her face and she passed away looking so happy again, quite as I can just remember her when I was a girl before papa died. Throughout her illness she was constantly talking about you and wondering where you were and thinking whether it would be possible for you to come back to see her before she died. If you could have done so how different things might have been. During the last month or two it has been very cold and she had much pain from rheumatism, and her mind wandered sometimes and then she seemed to confuse you with your grandfather and constantly I heard her say she hoped you would forgive her, and that it was not altogether her fault. I knew what she meant and I tried to comfort her by saying you were too generous to care much about money. And one night, just before the end, she told me a great secret which I must not tell you till you come home and settle down, no one knows it but me. I don't think I ought to have said anything about it

My dear boy I must now tell you how things are left by her will. Do not be angry, it was not her fault or mine, though I think it is very unjust. My father left everything in his will to grandmamma and though I knew he meant it all to go at last to my eldest son he did not like to fetter grandmamma's power of leaving it. From what she has often said to me he had told her he wished it to page 85go to my eldest son unless there was any great reason for not doing so. By his will he made your father her trustee, because as perhaps you know he had a very high idea of your father's honour and business habits. Papa, I mean your grandfather, had not as a young man led a very strictly religious life and your father had latterly succeeded in making him see the errors of his early days and in inducing him to take a more serious view of things. For this my dear father was very grateful and, as I said, made him his executor and put in his will that he trusted grandmamma would be guided by his opinion as to whom she was to leave the property on her death. Now it seems this in law gives papa a right of saying who shall have it at least your papa's lawyers wrote a long opinion that it was so and that if grandmamma did not follow his advice it might all be thrown into Chancery and be swallowed up by legal expenses. I have seen this opinion but I confess I do not understand it.

Papa told all this to grandmamma while we have been staying here and read her the lawyer's opinion and told her a great deal more about your wandering and careless habits and that you did not understand the value of money, that she was in duty bound to follow the advice of the person whose advice her husband had so strictly enjoined her to follow and a great deal more, and at last though I could see only with a great effort and much against her own feelings and wishes she said, "Well you know best I suppose." So papa who had got the will already drawn up made her sign it, and Aunt Jane was page 86the witness. She never looked so happy afterwards until all was over, and then it was no wonder for she was with my dear father in heaven. And there my dearest boy your poor mother often wishes she was too. Her mother gone her Frank away no one knows where and this question about the will has made a coldness between me and your father which I cannot quite get over.

I need hardly say the old Glades goes to Arthur. Papa is to be his trustee till he is twenty-one, then he is to have full possession but Aunt Jane is to live in the house, if she wishes to, during her life. I told Mabel about it when I saw her the other day. She seemed very much shocked, and said she did not think you cared much about money or anything else except travelling about the world.

Grandmamma gave me a number of messages to send you, but I cannot remember them now. Whatever you do don't say a word about the great secret 1 don't think I ought to have mentioned it to you. I hope I shall hear from you soon and that you are getting on well in New Zealand and making a great deal of money and will soon come back to your poor old mother. Do take care of the savages we hear such dreadful accounts of them, and that they are cannibals. Aunt Jane is very unwell. Nursing grandmamma knocked her up. I have made it up with her but I was very angry with her for helping papa to persuade grandmamma to make her will as she did.