tion. He threw
himself back, however, with a smile.

"You have been listening I see to the stories that people tell."

Faversham bent forward and spoke earnestly: "I understand that your wife
and child left you twenty years ago. Are they still living?"

Melrose shrugged his shoulders. "Whether they are or not, really matters
nothing at all either to you or me: Mrs. Melrose left this house of her
own free will. That ended the connection between us. In any case, you
need have no alarm. There is no entail--even were there a son, and there
never was a son. I do what I will with my own. There is no claim on
me--there would be no claim on you."

"There must be--there would be--a moral claim!"

The colour rushed into Melrose's face. He drummed the table impatiently.

"We will not, if you please, argue the matter, which is for me a _chose
jugee_. And no one who wishes to remain a friend of mine"--he spoke with
emphasis--"will ever attempt to raise ghosts that are better left in
their graves. I repeat--my property is unencumbered--my power to deal
with it absolute. I propose to make you my heir--on conditions. The first
is"--he looked sombrely and straight at his companion--"that I should not
be harassed or distressed by any such references as those you have just
made."

Faversham made no sound. His chin was propped on his hand, and his eyes
pursued the intricacies of a silver cup studded with precious stones
which stood on the table beside him. He thought, "The next condition will
be--the gems."

"The second," Melrose resumed, after a somewhat long pause, and with a
sarcastic intonation, "is that you should resist the very natural
temptation of exhibiting me to the world as a penitent and reformed
character. In that document you have just read you suggest to me--first,
that I should retire from three lawsuits in which, whatever other people
may think, I conceive that I have a perfectly good case; second"--he
ticked the items off on the long tapering finger of his left hand--"that
I should rebuild a score or two of cottages it would not pay me to
rebuild--in which I force no one to live--and which I shall pull down
when it pleases me, just to teach a parcel of busybodies to mind their
own business; third--that I should surrender, hands down, to a lot of
trumpery complaints and grievances got up partly to spite a landlord,
partly to get money out of him; and fourthly--with regard to the right of
way--that I should let th