up
another pen and began to strip the second quill of its feathers as he
had stripped the first.

"Yes," he said, reluctantly, "I suppose George must have it--I suppose
George has the principal claim on me." He hesitated: he looked at the
door, he looked at the window, as if he longed to make his escape by one
way or the other. "Oh, Lecount," he cried, piteously, "it's such a large
fortune! Let me wait a little before I leave it to anybody."

To his surprise; Mrs. Lecount at once complied with this characteristic
request.

"I wish you to wait, sir," she replied. "I have something important to
say, before you add another line to your will. A little while since,
I told you there was a second necessity connected with your present
situation, which had not been provided for yet, but which must be
provided for, when the time came. The time has come now. You have a
serious difficulty to meet and conquer before you can leave your fortune
to your cousin George."

"What difficulty?" he asked.

Mrs. Lecount rose from her chair without answering, stole to the door,
and suddenly threw it open. No one was listening outside; the passage
was a solitude, from one end to the other.

"I distrust all servants," she said, returning to her place--"your
servants particularly. Sit closer, Mr. Noel. What I have now to say to
you must be heard by no living creature but ourselves."

CHAPTER III.

THERE was a pause of a few minutes while Mrs. Lecount opened the second
of the two papers which lay before her on the table, and refreshed her
memory by looking it rapidly through. This done, she once more addressed
herself to Noel Vanstone, carefully lowering her voice, so as to render
it inaudible to any one who might be listening in the passage outside.

"I must beg your permission, sir," she began, "to return to the subject
of your wife. I do so most unwillingly; and I promise you that what I
have now to say about her shall be said, for your sake and for mine, in
the fewest words. What do we know of this woman, Mr. Noel--judging
her by her own confession when she came to us in the character of Miss
Garth, and by her own acts afterward at Aldborough? We know that, if
death had not snatched your father out of her reach, she was ready with
her plot to rob him of the Combe-Raven money. We know that, when you
inherited the money in your turn, she was ready with her plot to rob
_you_. We know how she carried that plot through to the end; and