‘Yes,’ said Lord Will, straightening himself up with relief; ‘there is money. My uncle John died the other day, rich, and without a will. There were only two other brothers, my father and my Uncle William. In that case, Uncle William’s heirs would come in for half the estate.’ He stopped with a little embarrassment. ‘And my father was of opinion--my mother thought---- It seemed a little hard perhaps that people we know nothing of--and then, for his rank, and with all he has to keep up, my father is a poor man.’ ‘So you came to see----?’ Whatever her own motives might be, Mrs. Swinford had no thought of letting off a culprit of another kind. The young man grew red under her searching eye. ‘You thought it a pity,’ she went on, ‘that the money you could spend so much better should be wasted upon a couple of insignificant women--who perhaps had never heard, never knew that they had any claim to it, so would have been none the worse?’ ‘You take me up too sharply,’ answered Lord Will. ‘I don’t think I meant anything like that. I meant that it was best to see something of them--to know something. My father has given Lady William an allowance all along. I don’t know that he was compelled to do it. He has not abandoned his brother’s widow. We thought that perhaps----’ ‘I will not ask what you find so much difficulty in putting into words. What would your father say to any one who gave him a chance of proving--that Emily Plowden was not William Pakenham’s widow at all?’ She had lowered her voice, but yet spoke with such a keenness of meaning that she was heard further than she intended. Leo came striding out of the dark where he was, calling out in a voice of indignation, ‘Mother!’ She turned to him and waved her hand quickly, threateningly, without any of the former consciousness of a gracious pose. ‘Go away!’ she cried, ‘go away, go away! What I am saying is not for you. Go away, Leo Swinford, or you may hear something you will like still less--go away, go away!’ ‘Swinford,’ said Lord Will, standing up, ‘this you see is too serious to be suppressed. Whether it’s fact or not, don’t you see I must hear out what your mother has got to say?’ Leo did not make any reply. He retired again to the darker part of the room, but instead of lounging about drew forward a chair almost ostentatiously, and placed himself therein. ‘I see,’ said Mrs. Swinford, with a laugh, ‘the Devil’s Advocate--on the part of his client. That will not make any difference. Would you like me to tell you how these two came together? I can do so in every detail.’