"Foxes don't set the whole countryside in a clatter when they start moving; they're of much too retiring a nature. It's some one making off through the bushes, that's who it is. Hi! you there, who are you?" There was no reply to his call. "Perhaps it was some one who came upon us unexpectedly, and--and didn't wish to disturb us." "Perhaps so; we're obliged to his taste for self-effacement if it is." "I suppose you've no idea what was in the envelope." "I've been putting two and two together, and I've formed a hypothesis which I'm convinced can't be very far out. Your father was not a man to say the thing which is not." "I'm sure of it." "I also; he did not say you would be a rich woman without cause. The hypothesis I've deduced is this. Your father was a gentleman of the old school; he didn't like commerce; he didn't wish people to think that he had anything to do with commerce; yet all the while he was drawing his income from a business with which he had probably been associated more or less unwillingly. At the time I saw him he was making arrangements to dispose of it; whether or not they were completed I cannot say; that envelope contains the clue. When he spoke of the suddenness of death he was possibly aware that he had a congenital predisposition towards the end which was actually his; and that envelope contained the secret--which he was even perilously anxious to preserve in life--of what was the source of his income, and of the fortune which he had built up for you." "All this, of course, is surmise." "You know it's more than surmise; you know that you're a rich woman, as you stand there." "I know, from the only facts which as yet are established, that, at present, I'm a pauper." "Well, we're both of us paupers; all the better." "I don't agree." "You're taking your cue from my mother." "I should prove myself very foolish if I need take such a cue from any one." "There's a wisdom of the foolish which is sometimes wonderful. If you were to marry me tomorrow----" "As if I should!" "You'd make my fortune!" "When, as you've told me again and again, you live on charity; and directly you married me that charity would stop?" "I know a way by which I could earn two or three hundred a year right off; before long I'd be earning thousands; I'm not incapable, I only need a spur; to work for the woman I love! I ask for nothing better. If I marry a woman with money the probability is that I should never earn a penny." "No, but you'd earn a name for yourself instead; one can earn something better than money." "May be." "And she'd be proud of you." "Even supposing that you're not buttering me up----" "As if I would!" "As if you would! as if you haven't done it over and over again! I know! I say, even granting I'm a swan of the very finest plumage----" "Mr. Spencer!" "Miss Lindsay; since you will interrupt me; and will descend to surnames; though, Nora, you're a darling."