Noel Vanstone smiled, and helped himself to a strawberry.  “I don’t attempt to deny it,” he said.  “Go on, Miss Garth.”

“Is it not true,” persisted Magdalen, “that the law which has taken the money from these sisters, whose father made no second will, has now given that very money to you, whose father made no will at all?  Surely, explain it how you may, this is hard on those orphan girls?”

“Very hard,” replied Noel Vanstone.  “It strikes you in that light, too—­doesn’t it, Lecount?”

Mrs. Lecount shook her head, and closed her handsome black eyes.  “Harrowing,” she said; “I can characterize it, Miss Garth, by no other word—­harrowing.  How the young person—­no! how Miss Vanstone, the younger—­discovered that my late respected master made no will I am at a loss to understand.  Perhaps it was put in the papers?  But I am interrupting you, Miss Garth.  Do have something more to say about your pupil’s letter?” She noiselessly drew her chair forward, as she said these words, a few inches beyond the line of the visitor’s chair.  The attempt was neatly made, but it proved useless.  Magdalen only kept her head more to the left, and the packing-case on the floor prevented Mrs. Lecount from advancing any further.

“I have only one more question to put,” said Magdalen.  “My pupil’s letter addressed a proposal to Mr. Noel Vanstone.  I beg him to inform me why he has refused to consider it.”

“My good lady!” cried Noel Vanstone, arching 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