I added immeasurably to my old friend's surprise by not even employing the post-office. I wished to see the "instructions" which my husband had left behind him. So I took the letter to his lawyers myself.
The firm consisted of two partners. They both received me together. One was a soft, lean man, with a sour smile. The other was a hard, fat man, with ill-tempered eyebrows. I took a great dislike to both of them. On their side, they appeared to feel a strong distrust of me. We began by disagreeing. They showed me my husband's "instructions," providing, among other things, for the payment of one clear half of his income as long as he lived to his wife. I positively refused to touch a farthing of his money.
The lawyers were unaffectedly shocked and astonished at this decision. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before in the whole course of their experience. They argued and remonstrated with me. The partner with the ill-tempered eyebrows wanted to know what my reasons were. The partner with the sour smile reminded his colleague satirically that I was a lady, and had therefore no reasons to give. I only answered, "Be so good as to forward my letter, gentlemen," and left them.
I have no wish to claim any credit to myself in these pages which I do not honestly deserve. The truth is that my pride forbade me to accept help from Eustace, now that he had left me. My own little fortune (eight hundred a year) had been settled on myself when I married. It had been more than I wanted as a single woman, and I was resolved that it should be enough for me now. Benjamin had insisted on my considering his cottage as my home. Under these circumstances, the expenses in which my determination to clear my husband's character might involve me were the only expenses for which I had to provide. I could afford to be independent, and independent I resolved that I would be.
While I am occupied in confessing my weakness and my errors, it is only right to add that, dearly as I still loved my unhappy, misguided husband, there was one little fault of his which I found it not easy to forgive.
Pardoning other things, I could not quite pardon his concealing from me that he had been married to a first wife. Why I should have felt this so bitterly as I did, at certain times and seasons, I am not able to explain. Jealousy was at the bottom of it, I suppose. And yet I was not conscious of being jealous--especially when I thought of the poor creature's miserable death. Still, Eustace ought not to have kept that secret from me, I used to think to myself, at odd times when I was discouraged and out of temper. What would he have said if I had been a widow, and had never told him of it?