"I don't want to slander a dead man, sir," I answered. "But if he HAS

purposely left a legacy of trouble and danger to his sister, by the

means of her child, it must be a legacy made conditional on his sister's

being alive to feel the vexation of it."

"Oh! That's your interpretation of his motive, is it? The Subjective

interpretation again! Have you ever been in Germany, Betteredge?"

"No, sir. What's your interpretation, if you please?"

"I can see," says Mr. Franklin, "that the Colonel's object may, quite

possibly, have been--not to benefit his niece, whom he had never even

seen--but to prove to his sister that he had died forgiving her, and to

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prove it very prettily by means of a present made to her child. There is

a totally different explanation from yours, Betteredge, taking its

rise in a Subjective-Objective point of view. From all I can see, one

interpretation is just as likely to be right as the other."

Having brought matters to this pleasant and comforting issue, Mr.

Franklin appeared to think that he had completed all that was required

of him. He laid down flat on his back on the sand, and asked what was to

be done next.

He had been so clever, and clear-headed (before he began to talk the

foreign gibberish), and had so completely taken the lead in the business

up to the present time, that I was quite unprepared for such a sudden

change as he now exhibited in this helpless leaning upon me. It was not

till later that I learned--by assistance of Miss Rachel, who was

the first to make the discovery--that these puzzling shifts and

transformations in Mr. Franklin were due to the effect on him of his

foreign training. At the age when we are all of us most apt to take

our colouring, in the form of a reflection from the colouring of other

people, he had been sent abroad, and had been passed on from one nation

to another, before there was time for any one colouring more than

another to settle itself on him firmly. As a consequence of this, he

had come back with so many different sides to his character, all more or

less jarring with each other, that he seemed to pass his life in a state

of perpetual contradiction with himself. He could be a busy man, and

a lazy man; cloudy in the head, and clear in the head; a model of

determination, and a spectacle of helplessness, all together. He had

his French side, and his German side, and his Italian side--the original

English foundation showing through, every now and then, as much as

to say, "Here I am, sorely transmogrified, as you see, but there's

something of me left at the bottom of him still." Miss Rachel used to

remark that the Italian side of him was uppermost, on those occasions

when he unexpectedly gave in, and asked you in his nice sweet-tempered

way to take his own responsibilities on your shoulders. You will do him

no injustice, I think, if you conclude that the Italian side of him was

uppermost now.




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