Every man, my dear, as the proverb has it, is at liberty to
do what he pleases with his own, according to his free will, and a
reasonable disposition. Let me hear no more of this, then, but enjoy
with gratitude that which God and your kind friend have bestowed upon
you."
We need not assure our readers that the Lindsays henceforth were
influenced by an unfriendly feeling toward the Goodwins, and that
all intercourse between the families terminated. On the part of Mrs.
Lindsay, this degenerated into a spirit of the most intense hatred and
malignity. To this enmity, however, there were exceptions in the family,
and strong ones, too, as the reader will perceive in the course of the
story.
Old Lindsay himself, although he mentioned the Goodwins with moderation,
could not help feeling strongly and bitterly the loss of property which
his children had sustained, owing to this unexpected disposition of it
by their uncle. Here, then, were two families who had lived in mutual
good-will and intimacy, now placed fronting each other in a spirit of
hostility. The Goodwins felt indignant that their motives should
be misinterpreted by what they considered deliberate falsehood and
misrepresentation; and the Lindsays could not look in silence upon
the property which they thought ought to be theirs, transferred to the
possession of strangers, who had wheedled a dotard to make a will
in their favor.
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