He nodded his head without looking at her.

“You have made it in your wife’s favor?”

He nodded again.

“You have left her everything you possess?”

“No.”

Mrs. Lecount looked surprised.

“Did you exercise a reserve toward her, Mr. Noel, of your own accord?” she inquired; “or is it possible that your wife put her own limits to her interest in your will?”

He was uneasily silent—­he was plainly ashamed to answer the question.  Mrs. Lecount repeated it in a less direct form.

“How much have you left your widow, Mr. Noel, in the event of your death?”

“Eighty thousand pounds.”

That reply answered the question.  Eighty thousand pounds was exactly the fortune which Michael Vanstone had taken from his brother’s orphan children at his brother’s death—­exactly the fortune of which Michael Vanstone’s son had kept possession, in his turn, as pitilessly as his father before him.  Noel Vanstone’s silence was eloquent of the confession which he was ashamed to make.  His doting weakness had, beyond all doubt, placed his whole property at the feet of his wife.  And thi s girl, whose vindictive daring had defied all restraints—­this girl, who had not shrunk from her desperate determination even at the church door—­had, in the very hour of her triumph, taken part only from the man who would willingly have given all!—­had rigorously exacted her father’s fortune from him to the last farthing; and had then turned her back on the hand that was tempting her with tens of thousands more!  For the moment, Mrs. Lecount was fairly silenced by her own surprise; Magdalen had forced the astonishment from her which is akin to admiration, the astonishment which her enmity would fain have refused.  She hated Magdalen with a tenfold hatred from that time.

“I have no doubt, sir,” she resumed, after a momentary silence, “that Mrs. Noel gave you excellent reasons why the provision for her at your death should be no more, and no less, than eighty thousand pounds.  And, on the other hand, I am equally sure that you, in your innocence of all suspicion, found those reasons conclusive at the time.  That time has now gone by.  Your eyes are opened, sir; and you will not fail to remark (as I remark) that the Combe-Raven property happens to reach the same sum exactly, as the legacy which your wife’s own instructions directed you to leave her.  If you are still in any doubt of the motive for which she married you, look in your own will—­and there the motive is!”

He raised his head from his hands, and became closely attentive to what she was saying to him, for the first time since they had faced each other at the table.  The Combe-Raven property had never been classed by itself in his estimation.  It had come to him merged in his father’s other possessions, at his father’s death.  The discovery which had now opened before him was one to which his ordinary habits of thought, as well as his innocence of suspicion, had hitherto closed his eyes.  He said nothing; but he looked less sullenly at Mrs. Lecount.  His manner was more ingratiating; the high tide of his courage was already on the ebb.