Yes, I suppose I have,' was the ungracious reply.

Adela stood before her for a moment, but could find nothing else to say.
She was turning when Alice looked up, her red eyes almost glaring, her
breast shaken with uncontrollable passion.

'I think you might have had some consideration,' she exclaimed. 'If you
didn't care to speak a word for yourself, you might have thought about
others. What are we to do, I. should like to know?'

Adela was struck with consternation. She had been prepared for petulant
bewailing, but a vehement outburst of this kind was the last thing she
could have foreseen, above all to have it directed against herself.

'What do you mean, Alice?' she said with pained surprise.

'Why, it's all your doing, I suppose,' the other pursued, in the same
voice. 'What right had you to let him go off in that way without saying
a word to us? If the truth was known, I expect you were at the bottom of
it; he wouldn't have been such a fool, whatever he says. What right had
you, I'd like to know?'

Adela calmed herself as she listened. Her surprise at the attack was
modified and turned into another channel by Alice's words.

'Has Richard told you what passed between us?' she inquired. It cost her
nothing to speak with unmoved utterance; the difficulty was not to seem
too indifferent.

'He's told us as much as he thought fit. His duty! I like that! As if
you couldn't have stopped him, if you'd chosen! You might have thought
of other people.'

'Did he tell you that I tried to stop him?' Adela asked, with the same
quietness of interrogation.

'Why, did you?' cried Alice, looking up scornfully.

'No.'

'Of course not! Talk about duty! I should think that was plain enough
duty. I only wish he'd come to me with his talk about duty. It's a duty
to rob people, I suppose? Oh, I understand _him_ well enough. It's an
easy way of getting out of his difficulties; as well lose his money this
way as any other. He always thinks of himself first, trust him! He'll go
down to New Wanley and make a speech, no doubt, and show off--with his
duty and all the rest of it! What's going to become of me? You'd no
right to let him go before telling us.'

'You would have advised him to say nothing about the will?'

'Advised him!' she laughed angrily. 'I'd have seen if I couldn't do
something more than advise.'

'I fear you wouldn't have succeeded in making your brother act
dishonourably,' Adela replied.

It was the first sarc