“That’s nonsense again,” continued the new advocate, “for there is no doubt she might have married Morton all the time had she pleased.”

“Yes;—­but Rufford!—­a fellow with sixty thousand a year!” said Glossop.

“About a third of that would be nearer the mark, Glossy.  Take my word for it, you don’t know everything yet, though you have so many advantages.”  After that Mounser Green retreated to his own room with a look and tone as though he were angry.

“What makes him so ferocious about it?” asked Glossop when the door was shut.

“You are always putting your foot in it,” said Currie.  “I kept on winking to you but it was no good.  He sees her almost every day now.  She’s staying with old Mrs. Green in Portugal Street.  There has been some break up between her and her mother, and old Mrs. Green has taken her in.  There’s some sort of relationship.  Mounser is the old woman’s nephew, and she is aunt by marriage to the Connop Greens down in Hampshire, and Mrs. Connop Green is first cousin to Lady Augustus.”

“If Dick’s sister married Tom’s brother what relation would Dick be to Tom’s mother?  That’s the kind of thing, isn’t it?” suggested Hoffmann.

“At any rate there she is, and Mounser sees her every day.”

“It don’t make any difference about Rufford,” said young Glossop stoutly.

All this happened before the will had been declared,—­when Arabella did not dream that she was an heiress.  A day or two afterwards she received a letter from the lawyer, telling her of her good fortune, and informing her that the trinkets would be given up to her and the money paid,—­short of legacy duty,—­whenever she would fix a time and place.  The news almost stunned her.  There was a moment in which she thought that she was bound to reject this money, as she had rejected that tendered to her by the other man.  Poor as she was, greedy as she was, alive as she was to the necessity of doing something for herself,—­still this legacy was to her at first bitter rather than sweet.  She had never treated any man so ill as she had treated this man; and it was thus that he punished her!  She was alive to the feeling that he had always been true to her.  In her intercourse with other men there had been generally a battle carried on with some fairness.  Diamond had striven to cut diamond.  But here the dishonesty had all been on one side, and she was aware that it had been so.  In her later affair with Lord Rufford, she really did think that she had been ill used; but she was quite alive to the fact that her treatment of John Morton had been abominable.  The one man, in order that he might escape without further trouble, had in the grossest manner, sent to her the offer of a bribe.  The other,—­in regard to whose end her hard heart was touched, even her conscience seared, had named her in his will as though his affection was unimpaired.  Of course she took the money, but she took it with inward groans.  She took the money and the trinkets, and the matter was all arranged for her by Mounser Green.