‘In France,’ said Lady William, ‘there is such a thing as a _faire part_. They don’t exist in England, I suppose?’ ‘They are hideous things in France,’ said Leo, with a shiver, ‘when you get a letter black to your elbow with a long string of names which you don’t know, till you come to one little one at the end----’ ‘They are better, however, than no information at all.’ ‘Oh, I hope you will not think there was any incivility meant. I myself heard my mother say that you must be informed. There was a search through all the address books, but we could not find at first where you lived. And then I volunteered----’ ‘To come here, of all places in the world--next door to my cottage! How extraordinarily acute your _flair_ must be, my dear Lord Will!’ ‘It’s not that,’ said the young man, very red. ‘I knew that Swinford knew you. He wrote to one of the girls, saying what a stun--I mean that you were in his neighbourhood, and about your daughter, and all that---- ’ ‘Perhaps it was the first intimation you had of our existence,’ she said. ‘Oh, no--no; don’t think so. Besides, you are in the peerage; there can be no mistake about that.’ ‘That is an honour I didn’t think of. And so your uncle John is dead? He was a very strange man--not like any of the family----’ ‘Not at all like the rest of us. None of the others had ever two sixpences to rub against each other. He has died leaving a great fortune.’ ‘A great fortune!’ said Lady William, startled. The young man looked as if he had said more than he intended. ‘A--a good deal of money,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean a great fortune as people think of fortunes nowadays. A good bit of money.’ He paused a little as if unwilling to go further, then quickly throwing the words from him like a stone, ‘And no will,’ he said. XXVIII ‘So,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘you have seen your dear aunt.’ Lord Will had arrived in the afternoon, and she had scarcely seen him until dinner. After that meal--in the moment always anxiously awaited when there is any subject to talk of, when the servants had left the room--she entered into conversation. It was not by her invitation that he had come to the Hall--neither, of course, were any of the circumstances of her arranging. Sometimes, strangely enough, when there is an evil deed to be done, Providence will seem to arrange all the circumstances for it with special care--to give the intending sinner a clearer light for the resistance of temptation, or to commit him to his evil choice and inevitable doom. Thus Mrs. Swinford’s whole soul was set upon the ruin of Lady William--if she could fathom it--and the chain of possibilities seemed woven for that end. ‘Yes,’ said Lord Will, though a little embarrassed by this description, ‘I have seen Lady William: and being a dear aunt whom I never saw before, and whom I did not expect to be proud of, she is the greatest piece of luck I ever came upon. You know her, I suppose?’