'You hear what Lecount has just said?' remarked Noel Vanstone. 'You hear the unsolicited testimony of a person who has known me from childhood? Take care, Miss Garth—take care!' He complacently arranged the tails of his white dressing-gown over his knees and took the plate of strawberries back on his lap.
'I have no wish to offend you,' said Magdalen. 'I am only anxious to open your eyes to the truth. You are not acquainted with the characters of the two sisters whose fortunes have fallen into your possession. I have known them from childhood; and I come to give you the benefit of my experience in their interests and in yours. You have nothing to dread from the elder of the two; she patiently accepts the hard lot which you, and your father before you, have forced on her. The younger sister's conduct is the very opposite of this. She has already declined to submit to your father's decision, and she now refuses to be silenced by Mrs. Lecount's letter. Take my word for it, she is capable of giving you serious trouble if you persist in making an enemy of her.'
Noel Vanstone changed color once more, and began to fidget again in his chair. 'Serious trouble,' he repeated, with a blank look. 'If you mean writing letters, ma'am, she has given trouble enough already. She has written once to me, and twice to my father. One of the letters to my father was a threatening letter—wasn't it, Lecount?'
'She expressed her feelings, poor child,' said Mrs. Lecount. 'I thought it hard to send her back her letter, but your dear father knew best. What I said at the time was, Why not let her express her feelings? What are a few threatening words, after all? In her position, poor creature, they are words, and nothing more.'
'I advise you not to be too sure of that,' said Magdalen. 'I know her better than you do.'
She paused at those words—paused in a momentary terror. The sting of Mrs. Lecount's pity had nearly irritated her into forgetting her assumed character, and speaking in her own voice.
'You have referred to the letters written by my pupil,' she resumed, addressing Noel Vanstone as soon as she felt sure of herself again. 'We will say nothing about what she has written to your father; we will only speak of what she has written to you. Is there anything unbecoming in her letter, anything said in it that is false? Is it not true that these two sisters have been cruelly deprived of the provision which their father made for them? His will to this day speaks for him and for them; and it only speaks to no purpose, because he was not aware that his marriage obliged him to make it again, and because he died before he could remedy the error. Can you deny that?'
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 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.
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;
