Читать книгу The Millbank Case: A Maine Mystery of To-day онлайн

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It is possible that some suspicion attached in her mind to the purchase of the annuity, and this may have been confirmed by Wing’s insistence that he would consent to occupy the homestead only on condition that she should make it her home for her lifetime. If, however, this was so, she proved herself large-minded enough to understand that her happiness—so far as this was possible to her now dwarfed life—was the best acknowledgment she could make to such a man, and during the five years since the judge’s death, she had been the mistress of Wing’s home.

The house stands at the crown of Parlin’s Hill. The estate embraces twenty acres, divided nearly equally between farm land, meadow, and woodland. The portion lying west of River Road is an apple orchard, covering the slope of the hill from the road to the river. The roll of the land is to the southwest, where all through the summer days the sun lies in warm splendour, that seems to live in the heart and juices of the red and yellow fruit, which is the pride of Millbank. To have apples from the Parlin orchard, is to have the best that Millbank can give.