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 inherited your own father’s fortune, as well as the fortune of Mr. Andrew Vanstone, and yet you feel no obligation to act from motives of justice or generosity toward these two sisters?  All you think it necessary to say to them is, you have got the money, and you refuse to part with a single farthing of it?”

“Most accurately stated!  Miss Garth, you are a woman of business.  Lecount, Miss Garth is a woman of business.”

“Don’t appeal to me, sir,” cried Mrs. Lecount, gracefully wringing her plump white hands.  “I can’t bear it!  I must interfere!  Let me suggest—­oh, what do you call it in English?—­a compromise.  Dear Mr. Noel, you are perversely refusing to do yourself justice; you have better reasons than the reason you have given to Miss Garth.  You follow your honored father’s example; you feel it due to his memory to act in this matter as he acted before you.  That is his reason, Miss Garth——­ I implore you on my knees to take that as his reason.  He will do what his dear father did; no more, no less.  His dear father made a proposal, and he himself will now make that proposal over again.  Yes, Mr. Noel, you will remember what this poor girl says in her letter to you.  Her sister has been obliged to go out as a governess; and she herself, in losing her fortune, has lost the hope of her marriage for years and years to come.  You will remember this—­and you will give the hundred pounds to one, and the hundred pounds to the other, which your admirable father offered in the past time?  If he does this, Miss Garth, will he do enough?  If he gives a hundred pounds each to these unfortunate sisters—?”

“He will repent the insult to the last hour of his life,” said Magdalen.

The instant that answer passed her lips she would have given worlds to recall it.  Mrs. Lecount had planted her sting in the right place at last.  Those rash words of Magdalen’s had burst from her passionately, in her own voice.