"I see." A smile of stern irony roused his features from their repose into an expressiveness that made Mrs.Whitney exceedingly uncomfortable--but the more resolute.
"Charles is willing to be liberal both in immediate settlement and in binding himself in the matter of his will," she went on.

"He often says, 'I don't want my children to be impatient for me to die.

I want to make 'em feel they're getting, if anything, more because I'm alive.'" A long pause, then Hiram said: "That's one way of looking at it." "That's _your_ way," said Matilda, as if the matter were settled.

And she smiled her softest and sweetest.

But Hiram saw only the glitter in her cold brown eyes, a glitter as hard as the sheen of her henna-stained hair.
"No," said he emphatically, "that's _not_ my way.