"I mean personal as distinguished from institutional--you know his first intention was to endow institutions. For instance, within a week after Barbara received the lawyer's announcement, she consulted me as to how she could best make provision for an old lady who has been for years more or less of a pensioner of her father's family. The dear old woman with a little aid has supported herself for many years, but lately it has seemed as if she would have to give up the wee bit of a home she loves so much and become an inmate of some great Institution, and this would almost break her heart. Barbara was in haste to put enough money at her disposal so that a good woman may be hired to come and care for her so long as she shall live, and to provide for all her wants. Also she remembered a poor young girl, once her and Betty's schoolmate, who has always longed for further study, whose one ambition has been to go to college. This was simply impossible, not even the strictest economy, even the going without necessities, has gathered together sufficient money for the expenses of a single year. Before we left Rome, Barbara arranged for the deposit in the bank at home of enough money to permit this struggling girl to look forward with certainty to a college course, and wrote the letter which will bring her so much joy.
"Dear child!" she continued tenderly, after a pause; "the only bit of money she has yet spent for herself was to get the spring outfits that she and Betty have really needed for some time, but for which they did not like to use their father's money.
"And I do believe," after another pause, "that the two girls' lives will be passed as unostentatiously as if the money had not come to them."
"Why do you speak as if the money had come to both?" asked Miss Sherman, with a curious inflection of the voice.
"Did I? I did not realize it. But I will not change my words; for, unless I mistake much, the money will be Bettina's as much as Barbara's, and this, because Barbara will have it so."
The words were hardly spoken by Mrs. Douglas when Mr. Sumner, who was riding backward and so facing the following carriage, sprang up, crying in a low, smothered tone of alarm, "Barbara!"