Sheila was startled by the suddenness of the announcement: “Perhaps I am a little tired with the traveling we have done to-day.” “Is Frank Lavender kind to you?” What was she to say with those two eyes scanning her face? “It is too soon to expect him to be anything else,” she said, with an effort at a smile. “Ah! So you are beginning to talk in that way? I thought you were full of sentimental notions of life when you came to London. It is not a good place for maturing such things.” “It is not,” said Sheila, surprised into a sigh. “Come nearer. Don’t be afraid I shall bite you. I am not so ferocious as I look.” Sheila rose and went closer to the bedside, and the old woman stretched out a lean and withered hand to her: “If I thought that that silly fellow wasn’t behaving well to you--” “I will not listen to you,” said Sheila, suddenly withdrawing her hand, while a quick color leapt to her face--“I will not listen to you if you speak of my husband in that way.” “I will speak of him any way I like. Don’t get into a rage. I have known Frank Lavender a good deal longer than you have. What I was going to say is this, that if I thought he was not behaving well to you, I would play him a trick. I would leave my money, which is all he has got to live on, to you; and when I died he would find himself dependent on you for every farthing he wanted to spend.” And the old woman laughed, with very little of the weakness of an invalid in the look of her face. But Sheila, when she had mastered her surprise and resolved not to be angry, said calmly, “Whatever I have, whatever I might have, that belongs to my husband, not to me.” “Now you speak like a sensible girl,” said Mrs. Lavender. “That is the misfortune of a wife, that she cannot keep her own money to herself. But there are means by which the law may be defeated, my dear. I have been thinking it over--I have been speaking of it to Mr. Ingram; for I have suspected for some time that my nephew, Mr. Frank, was not behaving himself.” “Mrs. Lavender,” said Sheila, with a face too proud and indignant for tears, “you do not understand me. No one has the right to imagine anything against my husband and to seek to punish him through me. And when I said that everything I have belongs to him, I was not thinking of the law--no--but only this: that everything I have, or might have, would belong to him, as I myself belong to him, of my own free will and gift; and I would have no money or anything else that was not entirely his.” “You are a fool.” “Perhaps,” said Sheila, struggling to repress her tears. “What if I were to leave every farthing of my property to a hospital? Where would Frank Lavender be then?” “He could earn his own living without any such help,” said Sheila, proudly; for she had never yet given up the hope that her husband would fulfill the fair promise of an earlier time, and win great renown for himself in striving to please her, as he had many a time vowed he would do.