‘He was right,’ exclaimed Eleanor, in a deep voice, which showed how great had been her interest and her suspense; and as she spoke, she struck her riding whip emphatically across her left hand, and looked up with a frown. ‘I would have done the same. Cowardly, snakelike traitor!’ The instinct of the fighting animal was strong in Eleanor, as it is in most healthy creatures. ‘You think so? A great many other persons thought the same; and a great lawyer, a friend of Michael’s, wanted him to dispute the will.’ ‘And did he?’ ‘Michael dispute it! My dear Miss Askam, he is far too haughty and high-flown to descend to any such mundane method of settling the matter. He said he washed his hands of it, and left his brother Gilbert to his conscience. He refused to touch any of the sum which was left him—or rather, to Gilbert, to manage for him. He said he had a profession which would keep him from starvation, and a roof to cover him—he would have no more.’ ‘I agree with him,’ said Eleanor, still very emphatically; and she lifted her eyes, filled with the feeling that was in her, and her whole countenance brightened with an ennobling light, the result of inner exaltation, and as Magdalen met this gaze, her own eyes dilated, a look of something like affright crossed her face; she said quickly and coldly— ‘It sounds very well—very grand, does it not? Quite heroic, in fact.’ ‘I think it was very fine—very high.’ ‘It sounds so, and it was so, in a way. But when one comes down to the dull regions of common sense, as one always has to do in the end, it does not work very well. For instance, that high resolution that you admire so much was the rock that Michael and I split upon.’ ‘Michael—and you,’ repeated Eleanor mechanically, looking at Magdalen with a new expression, and with all the glow fading from her eyes. ‘Yes, exactly. When Mr. Langstroth died, his son and I had been engaged three years. We had always looked forward to being married—at least, I had—when our prospects improved. But when all this came out, and it was evident that Michael would have no assistance, and even refused what he might have had, there was an end to all that, of course. He was not well off. He never will be. He has not the spirit of—I won’t say money-making, but of the most ordinary providence for the future. When he refused the provision that had been made for him, I knew that meant that I must give him up, and I did so. We have only been friends ever since, and——’ ‘You gave him up, then—oh, Miss Wynter, how could you?’ Eleanor had exclaimed, before she knew what she was saying. The next moment she felt that she had committed an indiscretion, but she scarcely improved the situation by hastily exclaiming, ‘Oh, I beg your pardon!’