countrified in the figure of the man, and something
clerical in his face, though there was nothing in his uncouth best
clothes that confirmed this impression. In both face and figure there
was a vague resemblance to some one she had seen before, when the
vice-consul said:

"Miss Claxon, I want to introduce the Rev. Mr. James B. Orson, of
Michigan." Mr. Orson took Clementina's hand into a dry, rough grasp,
while he peered into her face with small, shy eyes. The vice-consul
added with a kind of official formality, "Mr. Orson is the half-nephew
of Mr. Lander," and then Clementina now knew whom it was that he
resembled. "He has come to Venice," continued the vice-consul, "at
the request of Mrs. Lander; and he did not know of her death until I
informed him of the fact. I should have said that Mr. Orson is the son
of Mr. Lander's half-sister. He can tell you the balance himself." The
vice-consul pronounced the concluding word with a certain distaste, and
the effect of gladly retiring into the background.

"Won't you sit down?" said Clementina, and she added with one of the
remnants of her Middlemount breeding, "Won't you let me take your hat?"

Mr. Orson in trying to comply with both her invitations, knocked his
well worn silk hat from the hand that held it, and sent it rolling
across the room, where Clementina pursued it and put it on the table.

"I may as well say at once," he began in a flat irresonant voice, "that
I am the representative of Mrs. Lander's heirs, and that I have a letter
from her enclosing her last will and testament, which I have shown to
the consul here--"

"Vice-consul," the dignitary interrupted with an effect of rejecting any
part in the affair.

"Vice-consul, I should say,--and I wish to lay them both before you, in
order that--"

"Oh, that is all right," said Clementina sweetly. "I'm glad there is a
will. I was afraid there wasn't any at all. Mr. Bennam and I looked for
it everywhe'e." She smiled upon the Rev. Mr. Orson, who silently handed
her a paper. It was the will which Milray had written for Mrs. Lander,
and which, with whatever crazy motive, she had sent to her husband's
kindred. It provided that each of them should be given five thousand
dollars out of the estate, and that then all should go to Clementina. It
was the will Mrs. Lander told her she had made, but she had never seen
the paper before, and the legal forms hid the meaning from her so
that she was glad to have the vice-consu