As she looked
back at the passion of those full weeks she perceived in it a kind
of maternal strain-the happiness of a woman who felt that she was a
contributor, that she came with charged hands. But for her money, as
she saw to-day, she would never have done it. And then her mind
wandered off to poor Mr. Touchett, sleeping under English turf, the
beneficent author of infinite woe! For this was the fantastic fact. At
bottom her money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which was
filled with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some other
conscience, to some more prepared receptacle. What would lighten her
own conscience more effectually than to make it over to the man with
the best taste in the world? Unless she should have given it to a
hospital there would have been nothing better she could do with it;
and there was no charitable institution in which she had been as
much interested as in Gilbert Osmond. He would use her fortune in a
way that would make her think better of it and rub off a certain
grossness attaching to the good luck of an unexpected inheritance.
There had been nothing very delicate in inheriting seventy thousand
pounds; the delicacy had been all in Mr.
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