The lawyer smiled at this, but he was willing to let it pass without comment, for he had little doubt that it had cost Lady Mary a good deal of pain to give up her plans for gaining all the Murray estate.
When Lady Mary wrote to her son, it was a reproachful letter, and accused him of robbing her of the whole cheque, but to this he quickly sent a reply, saying that he certainly did post the letter to Brading's, and that Arthur certainly must have had this post office order.
About the time when Lady Mary got this letter from Adrian, Mrs. Murray's little servant came to the dining-room one evening with a request. "Please, Miss Molly, my cousin has come to see me," she announced; "can I ask her into the kitchen for a bit?"
"Oh, certainly!" answered Molly.
And being of a curious turn of mind, she thought she would go into the kitchen about an hour later and see what sort of a person this cousin was.
She saw a girl about Alice's own age sitting at the kitchen table, and the girls had some dirty-looking papers spread out before them.
"Let me tell Miss Molly all about it," whispered Alice as she went into the room.
Molly could not help overhearing what was said, and, stopping at the table, she said: "Is it something you want to ask me, Alice?"
The cousin nodded, but seemed shy of speaking, and so she nudged Alice and nodded by way of telling her to explain matters.
"My cousin here has found a big lump of money," said Alice, plunging at once into the tale. "It's such a big lump that she don't know what to do with it, and so she has come to show it to me and ask me about it."