"None."
"Ah! A fine thing, usurping!"
Mrs. Arles did not reply.
And then, in a half-angry justification, he exclaimed,—
"I didn't know there was such a person in the world! I could not come immediately on Erne's death. I was ill, and I was busy, and I let things wait for me. Why did no one write?"
"No one knew there was such a person as you. At least, no one supposed it signified."
"Signified! The Rim was my father's as much as it was Disbrowe Erne's father's. Disbrowe Erne's father entrapped mine, and got the other half. It was the old story of Esau's pottage, with thrice the villany. My father made me promise him on his death-bed, that, come fair means, The Rim should be mine again. I was twenty, Erne was fifty. Fair means came. Nevertheless, if I had known how things stood, I might have broken the promise,—who knows?—if at that moment I had happened to possess anything else in the world but my wardrobe, and sundry debts, and this!"
He opened, as he spoke, a purse that had seen service, and from his lordly height and supreme indifference, scattered its contents on the projecting top of the fireplace. They were two old pieces of ringing Spanish silver, a tiny golden coin of Hindostan, a dime, and a pine-tree shilling.
"Marlboro' won my last dollar," said he.
"Marlboro'?" said Mrs. Arles.