Mr. Tom Singleton smiled. "If so," he observed, "you must have changed very much."
"I haven't changed a particle. I did not give a thought to my father's fortune when I left him: I was thinking only of freedom, of escape from irksome control. And I hardly gave it a thought during the years that I have been out yonder, thoroughly satisfied with my own mode of life. I should not be here now but for the fact that a lawyer—what is his name?—took the trouble to write and inform me that my father was dead and I disinherited. Naturally one does not like to be ignored in that way; so I replied, directing him to contest the will. But since I have come, heard the circumstances of the case, and—and seen you, Miss Lynde, I perceive no reason for any such contest. We'll settle the matter more simply, if you say so."
"Seen you Miss Lynde!" It sounded simple enough, but the eyes of this wild man, as he called himself, emphasized the statement so that Marion could not doubt that her beauty might again secure for her an easy victory—if she cared for it. But she did not suffer this consciousness to appear in her manner or her voice as she replied:—
"We can settle it very simply, I think. Shall we now put aside the preliminaries and proceed to business?"
"Immediately, if you desire," answered Mr. Singleton. He bent forward slightly, pulling his long, dark moustache with a muscular, sunburned hand, while his brilliant gaze never wavered from Marion's face. His cousin also looked at her, apprehensively as it seemed, and gave a nervous cough. She met his eyes for an instant and smiled gravely, then turned her glance back to the other man.
"I am very sure, Mr. Singleton," she said, "that your father must have left his fortune to me under a wrong impression of your death. If this were not so he certainly left it under a false impression of my character. To retain money of which the rightful heir is living, is something of which I could never be guilty if every court of law in the land declared that the will should stand. Your father's fortune, then, is yours, and I will immediately take steps to resign all claim of mine upon it."
"But I have not asked you to resign more than a portion of it," answered Singleton, impetuously. "It is right enough that you should have half, since my father gave you the whole."
"You are very generous," she said, with a proud gentleness of tone; "but it is quite impossible for me to keep the half of your fortune. Your father would never have left it to me but for circumstances which need not be entered into—he wished to punish some one else. But he could never have wished to disinherit his son. I am certain of that. He liked me, however—I think I may say as much as that; he was very kind to me, and I believe that even if he had known of your existence he might have remembered me with a legacy; do you not think so?" She turned, as she uttered the last words, to Mr. Tom Singleton.
"I am sure of it," replied that gentleman.
"Believing this, I am willing to take what he would have been likely to give. It is rather difficult, of course, to conjecture what the exact amount would have been, but it seems to me that he would probably have left me about ten thousand dollars."