ching his white eyebrows in
satirical astonishment. "Are you really in earnest? Do you know what the
proposal is? Have you seen the letter?"

"I am quite in earnest," said Magdalen, "and I have seen the letter. It
entreats you to remember how Mr. Andrew Vanstone's fortune has come
into your hands; it informs you that one-half of that fortune, divided
between his daughters, was what his will intended them to have; and it
asks of your sense of justice to do for his children what he would have
done for them himself if he had lived. In plainer words still, it asks
you to give one-half of the money to the daughters, and it leaves you
free to keep the other half yourself. That is the proposal. Why have you
refused to consider it?"

"For the simplest possible reason, Miss Garth," said Noel Vanstone, in
high good-humor. "Allow me to remind you of a well-known proverb: A fool
and his money are soon parted. Whatever else I may be, ma'am, I'm not a
fool."

"Don't put it in that way, sir!" remonstrated Mrs. Lecount. "Be
serious--pray be serious!"

"Quite impossible, Lecount," rejoined her master. "I can't be serious.
My poor father, Miss Garth, took a high moral point of view in this
matter. Lecount, there, takes a high moral point of view--don't
you, Lecount? I do nothing of the sort. I have lived too long in the
Continental atmosphere to trouble myself about moral points of view. My
course in this business is as plain as two and two make four. I have got
the money, and I should be a born idiot if I parted with it. There is my
point of view! Simple enough, isn't it? I don't stand on my dignity; I
don't meet you with the law, which is all on my side; I don't blame
your coming here, as a total stranger, to try and alter my resolution;
I don't blame the two girls for wanting to dip their fingers into my
purse. All I say is, I am not fool enough to open it. _Pas si bete_, as
we used to say in the English circle at Zurich. You understand French,
Miss Garth? _Pas si bete!_" He set aside his plate of strawberries once
more, and daintily dried his fingers on his fine white napkin.

Magdalen kept her temper. If she could have struck him dead by lifting
her hand at that moment, it is probable she would have lifted it. But
she kept her temper.

"Am I to understand," she asked, "that the last words you have to say in
this matter are the words said for you in Mrs. Lecount's letter!"

"Precisely so," replied Noel Vanstone.

"You have