Anyhow, there was ample money. But I
naturally wanted to consult the wishes of his surviving relatives
and then the trouble really began. You see, it had been discovered
that Mr Hurlbird had had nothing whatever the matter with his
heart. His lungs had been a little affected all through his life and
he had died of bronchitis. It struck Miss Florence Hurlbird that,
since her brother had died of lungs and not of heart, his money
ought to go to lung patients. That, she considered, was what her
brother would have wished. On the other hand, by a kink, that I
could not at the time understand, Miss Hurlbird insisted that I
ought to keep the money all to myself. She said that she did not
wish for any monuments to the Hurlbird family. At the time I
thought that that was because of a New England dislike for
necrological ostentation. But I can figure out now, when I
remember certain insistent and continued questions that she put to
me, about Edward Ashburnham, that there was another idea in her
mind. And Leonora has told me that, on Florence's dressing-table,
beside her dead body, there had lain a letter to Miss Hurlbird--a
letter which Leonora posted without telling me.
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