Lionel, amazed by this self-canonisation, became less Aaron the priest and more Adam the natural man. "You don't call yourself immaculate, surely," he observed sarcastically. "Did I?" "By inference; and if no sinner, you must be saint." "Ah! I see. Lamp-black or snow-white; grey does not exist. Parsons see the horizon, the doorstep, but no middle distance. Woman is Lucrece or Jezebel, with you. I am neither; but a simple woman, as God made me." "And as the devil has marred." "Foh! In this very room, when we spoke last, I scouted that bogie's existence." "If you don't believe in evil existing, you can't in good. No devil, no God, Lady James." "I never knew that the Deity depended upon Satan for his being," said Leah, dryly; "and theology doesn't amuse me--it's cobwebs and spindrift. Talk sense, if you must talk." Lionel, hoping to lead her by a side-path to further consideration of her spiritual needs, consented to diverge for the moment. "I'll talk money, if you call that sense." "Of course I do; uncommon sense, as there is so little of it. Money?" She looked at him questioningly. "The insurance on your late husband's life." "Oh! Well?" She wondered what he was about to say. "The Duke asked me to interview the lawyers." "Very unnecessary. I know all about the twenty thousand pounds. Jim left it to me, by will." "You underestimate by ten thousand." "What! Thirty thousand pounds?" Then, in answer to a nod, "Oh, you--you must be--be mistaken." Leah was truthfully agitated. Had the golden goose laid two eggs instead of one? "No; your husband's life was insured, when he was a child, for twenty thousand pounds with profits, at an annual premium. Mr. Jarvey Peel and his executors paid the money to keep the insurance in force----" "Yes, yes; and the principal was payable to Jim at sixty, or to any one he might leave it to at death, I, as the widow, take all--all--all"; she repeated the word three times, in the purring voice of a cat over cream. "Exactly," assented the curate, thinking she betrayed over-plainly horse-leech parentage; "and the extra ten thousand is the accumulation of an annual bonus of fifteen pounds on every thousand." "That's three hundred a year," calculated Lady Jim, feverishly. "Quite so. Jim was thirty-five when he died. So three hundred a year for thirty-four years comes to ten thousand." "Two hundred," supplemented Lady Jim, correcting his arithmetic. "Oh, Lord! Thirty thousand two hundred pounds, and Jim never knew that he was worth his weight in this gold." "He never inquired, since the money would not come to him till he attained the age of sixty." "It would have been almost double then," commented the lady, pensively. "What a pity Jim did not live till---- But no; we should have both been old then, and there would have been no fun. I am content with thirty thousand--really I am, Lionel. It doesn't do to be greedy."