letter. Your sentence,
'I cannot imagine your thinking for a moment of keeping that money for
yourself,' is a most extraordinary one. What do you mean by 'keeping it
for myself'? It is mine: the house was mine and all that was in it. Old
Mrs. Jacobs is alive still, at least she was last week; but she has no
more claim on that money than any other old woman in town. I can't suppose
you would think me a thief, Mercy; but your letter strikes me as a very
strange one. Suppose I were to discover that there is a gold mine in the
orchard,--stranger things than that have happened,--would you say that
that also belonged to Mrs. Jacobs and not to me? The cases are precisely
parallel. You have allowed your impulsive feeling to run away with your
judgment; and, as I so often tell you, whenever you do that, you are
wrong. I never thought, however, it would carry you so far as to make you
suspect me of a dishonorable act."

Stephen was deeply wounded. Mercy's attempted reticence in her letter had
not blinded him. He felt what had underlain the words, and it was a hard
blow to him. His conscience was as free from any shadow of guilt in the
matter of that money as if it had been his by direct inheritance from his
own father. Feeling this, he had naturally the keenest sense of outrage at
Mercy's implied accusation.

Before Stephen's second letter came, Mercy had grown calm. The more she
thought the thing over, the more she felt sure that Mrs. Jacobs must be
dead, and that Stephen in his great excitement had forgotten to mention
the fact. Therefore the second letter was even a greater blow to her than
the first: it was a second and a deeper thrust into a wound which had
hardly begun to heal. There was also a tone of confident, almost
arrogant, assumption in the letter, it seemed to Mercy, which irritated
her. She did not perceive that it was the inevitable confidence of a
person so sure he is right that he cannot comprehend any doubt in
another's mind on the subject. There was in Mercy's nature a vein of
intolerance, which was capable of the most terrible severity. She was as
blinded, to Stephen's true position in the matter as he was to hers. The
final moment of divergence had come: its seeds were planted in her nature
and in Stephen's when they were born. Nothing could have hindered their
growth, nothing could have forestalled their ultimate result. It was only
a question of time and of occasion, when the two forces would be arrayed