“There is nothing to congratulate me upon,” replies Bertram, impatiently. “What?” “Nothing whatever.” “Why?” “Because I decline the bequest.” “Eh?” “I decline the bequest.” Lord Southwold pants like a blown horse, his small blue eyes grow large and black; his ruddy face deepens to purple. “Good God! You are mad as a hatter!” “Are hatters less sane than the rest of society? I am incredulous of the possibility.” “You can’t mean what you say--you are joking!” “I am entirely serious. And, if you will allow me to say so, you must be aware that the matter does not, I repeat, in the most remote manner concern you.” “Good Lord! Am I not your aunt’s husband?” “I have always heard so, and Burke vouches for it.” Southwold emits a strangled sound that is an oath, a snarl, and a groan in one. “You ought to be placed in a padded room, sir?” he says at length, when he recovers his voice. “Oh, I am never violent!” says Bertram with a slight smile, as he glances at the pieces of the broken whip. “Where do the money and estates go?” roars Southwold. “To a very respectable destination--Magdalen College.” “All of it?” “All of it.” “Oh Lord!” The unhappy gentleman, gasping for breath, drops down on a seat. “With this fortune you could marry Cicely Seymour! The girl likes you--more fool she!” Bertram changes colour. “You have no right to speak of that young lady: she is your guest.” Southwold becomes furious. “You dare to lecture me? You infernal ass! who are only fit for a strait-waistcoat.” Bertram shrugs his shoulders. “You are stark staring mad!” roars Southwold; “and I tell you you are a disgrace to your family.” Bertram smiles. “How extremely immoral, then, to wish me to accept and administer a great property.” “Damnation!” Southwold puts his hat on his head, strikes his cane violently on the back of a chair, and rushes out of the room. “What can it possibly matter to him?” murmurs Bertram. “The idea of money excites some people as valerian does cats.” Lord Southwold, in a whirlwind of disgust, walks as rapidly as a gouty toe will let him through the three or four streets which divide him from his own house in Berkeley Square, and mounts the staircase of his home with his wrath at boiling-point. He goes into his wife’s morning-room, where she and Cicely Seymour are sitting, one reading, the other writing letters. “It’s true!” he shouts. “It’s perfectly true! it’s been left to him and he won’t have it--can you believe that? he won’t have it!” Cicely looks up from her book and says nothing; his wife looks up from her writing-pad and says with a sigh: “I _can_ believe it--_of him_.” “Well, I can’t; though I’ve heard him say it with my own ears,” returns her lord, as he drops down on a soft seat with the air of a man crushed, annihilated, effaced from creation. “And he said, ‘What could it possibly matter to us?’” he added in a faint tone. Cicely closes her book. “Well, dear Lord Southwold, why should it matter?”