‘What have I done!’ she exclaimed.  Springing to the tongs she seized with them the portion of the writing yet unconsumed, and dragged it out of the fire.  Ethelberta appeared at the door.

‘Quick, Ethelberta!’ said Lady Petherwin.  ‘Help me to put this out!’ And the two women went trampling wildly upon the document and smothering it with a corner of the hearth-rug.

‘What is it?’ said Ethelberta.

‘My will!’ said Lady Petherwin.  ’I have kept it by me lately, for I have wished to look over it at leisure—­’

‘Good heavens!’ said Ethelberta.  ’And I was just coming in to tell you that I would always cling to you, and never desert you, ill-use me how you might!’

‘Such an affectionate remark sounds curious at such a time,’ said Lady Petherwin, sinking down in a chair at the end of the struggle.

‘But,’ cried Ethelberta, ‘you don’t suppose—­’

’Selfishness, my dear, has given me such crooked looks that I can see it round a corner.’

’If you mean that what is yours to give may not be mine to take, it would be as well to name it in an impersonal way, if you must name it at all,’ said the daughter-in-law, with wet eyelids.  ’God knows I had no selfish thought in saying that.  I came upstairs to ask you to forgive me, and knew nothing about the will.  But every explanation distorts it all the more!’

’We two have got all awry, dear—­it cannot be concealed—­awry—­awry.  Ah, who shall set us right again?  However, now I must send for Mr. Chancerly—­no, I am going out on other business, and I will call upon him.  There, don’t spoil your eyes:  you may have to sell them.’

She rang the bell and ordered the carriage; and half-an-hour later Lady Petherwin’s coachman drove his mistress up to the door of her lawyer’s office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

11.  Sandbourne and its neighbourhood—­some London streets

While this was going on in town, Christopher, at his lodgings in Sandbourne, had been thrown into rare old visions and dreams by the appearance of Ethelberta’s letter.  Flattered and encouraged to ambition as well as to love by her inspiriting sermon, he put off now the last remnant of cynical doubt upon the genuineness of his old mistress, and once and for all set down as disloyal a belief he had latterly acquired that ‘Come, woo me, woo me; for I am like enough to consent,’ was all a young woman had to tell.

All the reasoning of political and social economists would not have convinced Christopher that he had a better chance in London than in Sandbourne of making a decent income by reasonable and likely labour; but a belief in a far more improbable proposition, impetuously expressed, warmed him with the idea that he might become famous there.  The greater is frequently more readily credited than the less, and an argument which will not convince on a matter of halfpence appears unanswerable when applied to questions of glory and honour.