ther's son!"

Mrs. Lecount bowed submissively.

"I mean to set down any sum of money I think right," pursued Noel
Vanstone, nodding his little flaxen head vehemently. "I mean to send
this advertisement myself. The servant shall take it to the stationer's
to be put into the _Times_. When I ring the bell twice, send the
servant. You understand, Lecount? Send the servant."

Mrs. Lecount bowed again and walked slowly to the door. She knew to a
nicety when to lead her master and when to let him go alone. Experience
had taught her to govern him in all essential points by giving way to
him afterward on all points of minor detail. It was a characteristic
of his weak nature--as it is of all weak natures--to assert
itself obstinately on trifles. The filling in of the blank in the
advertisement was the trifle in this case; and Mrs. Lecount quieted her
master's suspicions that she was leading him by instantly conceding it.
"My mule has kicked," she thought to herself, in her own language, as
she opened the door. "I can do no more with him to-day."

"Lecount!" cried her master, as she stepped into the passage. "Come
back."

Mrs. Lecount came back.

"You're not offended with me, are you?" asked Noel Vanstone, uneasily.

"Certainly not, sir," replied Mrs. Lecount. "As you said just now--you
are master."

"Good creature! Give me your hand." He kissed her hand, and smiled in
high approval of his own affectionate proceeding. "Lecount, you are a
worthy creature!"

"Thank you, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. She courtesied and went out. "If he
had any brains in that monkey head of his," she said to herself in the
passage, "what a rascal he would be!"

Left by himself, Noel Vanstone became absorbed in anxious reflection
over the blank space in the advertisement. Mrs. Lecount's apparently
superfluous hint to him to be liberal in offering money when he knew
he had no intention of parting with it, had been founded on an intimate
knowledge of his character. He had inherited his father's sordid love of
money, without inheriting his father's hard-headed capacity for seeing
the uses to which money can be put. His one idea in connection with his
wealth was the idea of keeping it. He was such an inborn miser that the
bare prospect of being liberal in theory only daunted him. He took up
the pen; laid it down again; and read the anonymous letter for the third
time, shaking his head over it suspiciously. "If I offer this man a
large sum of money,