There (thought Billy) is the end!  Ah, ropes, daggers, and poisons! there is the end!  Oh, Peggy.  Peggy, if you could only have loved me! if only this accursed money hadn’t spoiled you so utterly!  Billy was quite properly miserable over it.

But he raised his head with a smile.  “And now,” said he—­and not without a little, little bitterness; “if I have any right to advise you, Peggy, I—­I think I’d be more careful in the future as to how I used the money.  You’ve tried to do good with it, I know.  But every good cause has its parasites.  Don’t trust entirely to the Haggages and Jukesburys, Peggy, and—­and don’t desert the good ship Philanthropy because there are a few barnacles on it, dear.”

“You make me awfully tired,” Miss Hugonin observed, as she rose to her feet.  “How do you suppose I’m going to do anything for Philanthropy or any other cause when I haven’t a penny in the world?  You see, you’ve just burned the last will Uncle Fred ever made—­the one that left everything to me.  The one in your favour was probated or proved or whatever they call it a week ago.”  I think Billy was surprised.

She stood over him, sharply outlined against the darkness, clasping her hands tightly just under her chin, ludicrously suggestive of a pre-Raphaelitish saint.  In the firelight her hair was an aureole; and her gown, yellow with multitudinous tiny arabesques of black velvet, echoed the glow of her hair to a shade.  The dancing flames made of her a flickering little yellow wraith.  And oh, the quaint tenderness of her eyes!—­oh, the hint of faint, nameless perfume she diffused! thus ran the meditations of Billy’s dizzied brain.

“Listen!  I told you I burned the other will.  I started to burn it.  But I was afraid to, because I didn’t know what they could do to me if I did.  So I put it away in my little handkerchief-box—­and if you’d had a grain of sense you’d have noticed the orris on it.  And you made me promise not to take any steps in the matter till you got well.  I knew you would.  So I had already sent that second will—­sent it before I promised you—­to Hunston Wyke—­he’s my lawyer now, you know—­and I’ve heard from him, and he has probated it.”

Billy was making various irrelevant sounds.

“And I brought that other will to you, and if you didn’t choose to examine it more carefully I’m sure it wasn’t my fault.  I kept my word like a perfect gentleman and took no step whatever in the matter.  I didn’t say a word when before my eyes you stripped me of my entire worldly possessions—­you know I didn’t.  You burned it up yourself, Billy Woods—­of your own free will and accord—­and now Selwoode and all that detestable money belongs to you, and I’m sure I’d like to know what you are going to do about it.  So there!”

Margaret faced him defiantly.  Billy was in a state of considerable perturbation.

“Why have you done this?” he asked, slowly.  But a lucent something—­half fear, half gladness—­was wakening in Billy’s eyes.