"What should you say--?" he began, and suddenly stopped again.
"Yes, sir?"
"What should you say to--a thousand pounds?"
Mrs. Lecount rose from her chair, and looked him full in the face, with the majestic indignation of an outraged woman.
"After the service I have rendered you to-day, Mr. Noel," she said, "I have at least earned a claim on your respect, if I have earned nothing more. I wish you good-morning."
"Two thousand!" cried Noel Vanstone, with the courage of despair.
Mrs. Lecount folded up her papers and hung her traveling-bag over her arm in contemptuous silence.
"Three thousand!"
Mrs. Lecount moved with impenetrable dignity from the table to the door.
"Four thousand!"
Mrs. Lecount gathered her shawl round her with a shudder, and opened the door.
"Five thousand!"
He clasped his hands, and wrung them at her in a frenzy of rage and suspense. "Five thousand" was the death-cry of his pecuniary suicide.
Mrs. Lecount softly shut the door again, and came back a step.
"Free of legacy duty, sir?" she inquired.
"No."
Mrs. Lecount turned on her heel and opened the door again.
"Yes."
Mrs. Lecount came back, and resumed her place at the table as if nothing had happened.
"Five thousand pounds, free of legacy duty, was the sum, sir, which your father"s grateful regard promised me in his will," she said, quietly.
"If you choose to exert your memory, as you have not chosen to exert it yet, your memory will tell you that I speak the truth. I accept your filial performance of your father"s promise, Mr. Noel--and there I stop.
I scorn to take a mean advantage of my position toward you; I scorn to grasp anything from your fears. You are protected by my respect for myself, and for the Ill.u.s.trious Name I bear. You are welcome to all that I have done, and to all that I have suffered in your service. The widow of Professor Lecompte, sir, takes what is justly hers--and takes no more!"
As she spoke those words, the traces of sickness seemed, for the moment, to disappear from her face; her eyes shone with a steady inner light; all the woman warmed and brightened in the radiance of her own triumph--the triumph, trebly won, of carrying her point, of vindicating her integrity, and of matching Magdalen"s incorruptible self-denial on Magdalen"s own ground.
"When you are yourself again, sir, we will proceed. Let us wait a little first."
She gave him time to compose himself; and then, after first looking at her Draft, dictated the second paragraph of the will, in these terms:
"I give and bequeath to Madame Virginie Lecompte (widow of Professor Lecompt e, late of Zurich) the sum of Five Thousand Pounds, free of Legacy Duty. And, in making this bequest, I wi sh to place it on record that I am not only expressing my own sense of Madame Lecompte"s attachment and fidelity in the capacity of my housekeeper, but that I also believe myself to be executing the intentions of my deceased father, who, but for the circ.u.mstance of his dying intestate, would have left Madame Lecompte, in _his_ will, the same token of grateful regard for her services which I now leave her in mine."
"Have you written the last words, sir?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Lecount leaned across the table and offered Noel Vanstone her hand.
"Thank you, Mr. Noel," she said. "The five thousand pounds is the acknowledgment on your father"s side of what I have done for him. The words in the will are the acknowledgment on yours."
A faint smile flickered over his face for the first time. It comforted him, on reflection, to think that matters might have been worse. There was balm for his wounded spirit in paying the debt of grat.i.tude by a sentence not negotiable at his banker"s. Whatever his father might have done, _he_ had got Lecount a bargain, after all!
"A little more writing, sir," resumed Mrs. Lecount, "and your painful but necessary duty will be performed. The trifling matter of my legacy being settled, we may come to the important question that is left. The future direction of a large fortune is now waiting your word of command.
To whom is it to go?"
He began to writhe again in his chair. Even under the all-powerful fascination of his wife the parting with his money on paper had not been accomplished without a pang. He had endured the pang; he had resigned himself to the sacrifice. And now here was the dreaded ordeal again, awaiting him mercilessly for the second time!
"Perhaps it may a.s.sist your decision, sir, if I repeat a question which I have put to you already," observed Mrs. Lecount. "In the will that you made under your wife"s influence, to whom did you leave the surplus money which remained at your own disposal?"
There was no harm in answering the question now. He acknowledged that he had left the money to his cousin George.
"You could have done nothing better, Mr. Noel; and you can do nothing better now," said Mrs. Lecount. "Mr. George and his two sisters are your only relations left. One of those sisters is an incurable invalid, with more than money enough already for all the wants which her affliction allows her to feel. The other is the wife of a man even richer than yourself. To leave the money to these sisters is to waste it. To leave the money to their brother George is to give your cousin exactly the a.s.sistance which he will want when he one day inherits his uncle"s dilapidated house and his uncle"s impoverished estate. A will which names the admiral your executor and Mr. George your heir is the right will for you to make. It does honor to the claims of friendship, and it does justice to the claims of blood."
She spoke warmly; for she spoke with a grateful remembrance of all that she herself owed to the hospitality of St. Crux. Noel Vanstone took up another pen and began to strip the second quill of its feathers as he had stripped the first.
"Yes," he said, reluctantly, "I suppose George must have it--I suppose George has the princ.i.p.al claim on me." He hesitated: he looked at the door, he looked at the window, as if he longed to make his escape by one way or the other. "Oh, Lecount," he cried, piteously, "it"s such a large fortune! Let me wait a little before I leave it to anybody."
To his surprise; Mrs. Lecount at once complied with this characteristic request.
"I wish you to wait, sir," she replied. "I have something important to say, before you add another line to your will. A little while since, I told you there was a second necessity connected with your present situation, which had not been provided for yet, but which must be provided for, when the time came. The time has come now. You have a serious difficulty to meet and conquer before you can leave your fortune to your cousin George."
"What difficulty?" he asked.
Mrs. Lecount rose from her chair without answering, stole to the door, and suddenly threw it open. No one was listening outside; the pa.s.sage was a solitude, from one end to the other.
"I distrust all servants," she said, returning to her place--"your servants particularly. Sit closer, Mr. Noel. What I have now to say to you must be heard by no living creature but ourselves."
CHAPTER III.
THERE was a pause of a few minutes while Mrs. Lecount opened the second of the two papers which lay before her on the table, and refreshed her memory by looking it rapidly through. This done, she once more addressed herself to Noel Vanstone, carefully lowering her voice, so as to render it inaudible to any one who might be listening in the pa.s.sage outside.
"I must beg your permission, sir," she began, "to return to the subject of your wife. I do so most unwillingly; and I promise you that what I have now to say about her shall be said, for your sake and for mine, in the fewest words. What do we know of this woman, Mr. Noel--judging her by her own confession when she came to us in the character of Miss Garth, and by her own acts afterward at Aldborough? We know that, if death had not s.n.a.t.c.hed your father out of her reach, she was ready with her plot to rob him of the Combe-Raven money. We know that, when you inherited the money in your turn, she was ready with her plot to rob _you_. We know how she carried that plot through to the end; and we know that nothing but your death is wanted, at this moment, to crown her rapacity and her deception with success. We are sure of these things.
We are sure that she is young, bold, and clever--that she has neither doubts, scruples, nor pity--and that she possesses the personal qualities which men in general (quite incomprehensibly to _me!_) are weak enough to admire. These are not fancies, Mr. Noel, but facts; you know them as well as I do."
He made a sign in the affirmative, and Mrs. Lecount went on:
"Keep in your mind what I have said of the past, sir, and now look with me to the future. I hope and trust you have a long life still before you; but let us, for the moment only, suppose the case of your death--your death leaving this will behind you, which gives your fortune to your cousin George. I am told there is an office in London in which copies of all wills must be kept. Any curious stranger who chooses to pay a shilling for the privilege may enter that office, and may read any will in the place at his or her discretion. Do you see what I am coming to, Mr. Noel? Your disinherited widow pays her shilling, and reads your will. Your disinherited widow sees that the Combe-Raven money, which has gone from your father to you, goes next from you to Mr. George Bartram.