So saying, after her succinct statement, she vanished.

Mrs. Arles lingered a moment to wind up her tatting.  St. George, who had at first stood like a golden bronze cast immovably in an irate surprise, then shook his shoulders, and stepped towards the table and carelessly parted the papers.

“Remarkable manuscript,” said he, as if just then he could find nothing else to say.  “Plainer than type.  A purely American hand.  Is it that of the young lady?”

“Miss Changarnier?  Yes.”

“She was apparent heiress?”

“Yes.”

“What does she expect to become of her?”

“How can I tell?”

“You can conjecture.”

“She has not yet begun to consider, herself, you see.”

“She has other property?”

“None.”

“Ah!  A fine thing, usurping!”

Mrs. Arles did not reply.

And then, in a half-angry justification, he exclaimed,—­

“I didn’t know there was such a person in the world!  I could not come immediately on Erne’s death.  I was ill, and I was busy, and I let things wait for me.  Why did no one write?”

“No one knew there was such a person as you.  At least, no one supposed it signified.”

“Signified!  The Rim was my father’s as much as it was Disbrowe Erne’s father’s.  Disbrowe Erne’s father entrapped mine, and got the other half.  It was the old story of Esau’s pottage, with thrice the villany.  My father made me promise him on his death-bed, that, come fair means, The Rim should be mine again.  I was twenty, Erne was fifty.  Fair means came.  Nevertheless, if I had known how things stood, I might have broken the promise,—­who knows?—­if at that moment I had happened to possess anything else in the world but my wardrobe, and sundry debts, and this!”

He opened, as he spoke, a purse that had seen service, and from his lordly height and supreme indifference, scattered its contents on the projecting top of the fireplace.  They were two old pieces of ringing Spanish silver, a tiny golden coin of Hindostan, a dime, and a pine-tree shilling.

“Marlboro’ won my last dollar,” said he.

“Marlboro’?” said Mrs. Arles.

“What do you know of Marlboro’?”

“He lives over here at Blue Bluffs.”

“The Devil he does!”

Mr. St. George Erne glanced at the dark little woman sitting before him.  No smile softened her face, no ray had lighted it; she only intelligently observed, and monosyllabically answered him.  She was a study,—­might also be convenient; the place would be ennuisome; somebody must sit at the head of his table.  He threw his purse into the fire.

“Mrs. Arles,” he said, “it is decidedly necessary, that, to conduct my house, there should be in it a female relative,—­an article I do not possess.  Will you take the part, and remain with me on the same terms as with my Cousin Erne?”

Mrs. Arles had intended to propose such an arrangement herself, and, after a brief pause for apparent consideration, replied affirmatively, not thinking it worth while to tell him that the section of the farm, with its laborers, set apart for her benefit, was a device of Eloise’s, and not one of anterior date.