‘I have told you almost everything, my child. It has been a sad business; sad from beginning to end. I have settled it all up—all poor Gilbert’s affairs. He was different from me; no doubt of that. I learnt a lesson or two.’ ‘In what way?’ ‘Why, Eleanor, it is simply the old story, that a man often seems much worse than he is. I never for a moment realised that _I_ could have been in fault. I always saw his sin so large; it blotted out everything else. We will talk it all over another time. There was no difficulty in settling his affairs; disorder was abhorrent to his very soul. When I think of that, and of his painstaking, methodical, perfect system of doing things, and then remember my own scatterbrained practices, and remember how young he was, too, I feel as if now, by the light of all these other troubles and experiences, I can understand the temptation that beset him then, to keep things safe—the returning prosperity which he had built up with so much trouble—to keep me from squandering it, as he felt sure I should. Yes; I can see it. By George! What an opinion I must have had in those days of my own perfection and freedom from flaw of any kind. It is incredible.’ ‘But, Michael, it was wrong of him.’ ‘Yes, it was wrong of him, and as wrong of me. Roger knew that. Roger was very unhappy because of what I did. We were both about as wrong as we could be, I suppose.’ Eleanor was silent. She would not gainsay him, but she did not agree; and it was hardly to be expected that she should at that stage of the proceedings. ‘His will, Eleanor, will surprise you. It was made since that Christmas when you and he were together at Thorsgarth; when Magdalen and Otho became engaged. And he has left his money rather curiously,—half to Magdalen, in case she marries Otho, to be settled upon her and her children if she should have any, as strictly as it can possibly be done; and half to you, in case you marry—whom, do you suppose?’ ‘Not himself?’ she asked, pale and breathless. Michael laughed. ‘No, madam, but your present husband.’ ‘Michael! And what if——’ ‘If neither of those marriages really took place, it all came to me, except an annuity to Magdalen of five hundred a year.’ ‘To Magdalen!’ ‘Yes. I, too, was surprised at first. And then I seemed to comprehend that too. It was for the sake of old times, when we were young together. He and Magdalen in a cool, curious sort of way, always understood one another; and when he was over here, he several times spoke to me about her, and seemed distressed at the idea of the great change and reverse that had come over her. “She is not a high-minded woman,” he said to me once, “but she has had every hope crushed, and has lived in a kind of tomb with that old woman all the best of her life.” So that was the way he took, I suppose, of expressing his sympathy.’