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pertness about them.
    “We can refuse to have anything to do with it!”
    “You can.” His eyes gleamed at her in a way she had never seen them do before, with strange humourless humour. “There is nothing I can refuse, for I have been left nothing—unless you condescend to marry me! If you don’t feel you can stomach me as a husband, you get, I believe, a thousand pounds; but there is nothing I can say or do to prevent the residue of my Aunt Abbie’s considerable fortune going to various charities she has named. Perhaps that hasn’t quite sunk in yet?”
    Chloe stared at him.
    “But it’s monstrous!” she protested. “It’s worse than monstrous!”
    “Do you really think so?” he asked, as if he was interested. “You knew my aunt. You believed her a fair-minded woman, didn’t you? Not a woman to behave badly to her nearest and dearest?”
    “I believed ... I was certain she was devoted to you! I still am certain!”
    “Well, then—” watching her as if her reactions were suddenly of absorbing interest—“what do you deduce from all this?”
    “I couldn’t possibly deduce anything. It’s too utterly puzzling,” she replied.
    But Pierre wouldn’t have that.
    “Not if you put yourself in my aunt’s position, and follow her reasoning. You forget that her husband was a Frenchman, and she knew that he married her for her money. It worked out—as it so often does in France—and she conceived the notion that history ought to repeat itself, and picked upon you to prove her point. She left you everything she possessed, on condition that you marry me ... And all you have to decide is how soon you can bear to become my wife!”
    Chloe put both hands up to her face, and stared at him as if his unnatural air of casualness was too much for her.
    “But you don’t mean—you can’t mean—that you would marry me—a stranger!—for my money?”
    “My aunt’s money,” he corrected her suavely.
    “Are you so-so badly off?” Chloe heard herself stammer.
    He shrugged.
    “Why do you think I came here?”
    “In order to borrow money?”
    “That sounds crude—particularly as I was very fond of Aunt Abbie!—but you can put it like that if you like.”
    Once again Chloe put her hands up to her cheeks. They felt hot—painfully, embarrassingly hot—yet her hands were cold as ice, and trembling, and she knew she had received something, in the nature of a shattering shock. It had never once occurred to her that she could become mistress of Trelas if she chose!
    Mistress of Trelas, and completely independent for the rest of her life! Financially, that is, for a wife could hardly ask for complete independence ... Or could she?
    “What are we going to do?” Chloe asked huskily, one hand reaching out to him appealingly.
    He took it and held it comfortingly.
    “I’ve told you. Don’t bother for the moment. I’m going back to the inn ... ” He had stayed there since the late mistress of Trelas had departed from it, and Chloe found herself looking up at him with rather an odd feeling suddenly, and thinking of Fern de Lisle. Fern de Lisle was still at the inn, and they were together ... It was extraordinary!
    The whole situation was extraordinary!
    There came a light tap at the door, and the butler, entered.
    “What is it, Burton?” Pierre asked, a little impatiently.
    “Miss Pentland would like to see Miss Meredith, if it is at all convenient,” Burton replied, bowing slightly in his best well-trained manservant manner. But he added with a mournfulness that gave away his own anxiety on the same score, “I think she is anxious to hear about Madame’s will. She saw the solicitor drive away.”
    “But it’s nothing to do with Miss Pentland!” Pierre exclaimed, his brown eyes revealing a good deal of sudden irritation, and Eunice appeared in the doorway and agreed with him, softly.
    “Of course it isn’t, Mr. Albertin. Or should I say, Vicomte? I understand that your real title is Vicomte de Ramballe?