‘By Jove! don’t drive me to it, or I may---- Look here, don’t let’s quarrel, Swinford. It’s so caddish. I never thought of the business, I tell you, from your point of view. It sounds very plausible. It’s quite possible the lawyers wouldn’t have stood it; I don’t know. They never thought of the law, nor that she had any natural right, don’t you see, to old John’s money. They knew very well he would never have left it to her, when he knew how heavily the governor was dipped and all that. I fail to see even now what harm there was in it. The allowance, of course, would be continued, and five thousand pounds is as much to a woman living like that, as fifty is at home. It would have been an enormous windfall; that is what my mo--I mean what my people thought.’ Leo Swinford had a mind which was very tolerant, and he wanted of course, now he had calmed down a little, to make the best of it. He nodded his head, and said: ‘I allow that perhaps it was plausible; but I presume it would be felony all the same.’ ‘Felony,’ said the other with a stare of astonishment--the word seemed to puzzle him. ‘The governor is the head of the family,’ he said vaguely, which somehow seemed a reason. ‘It would be defrauding one of the heirs of an intestate person of her just share. The heir would be Mab, I suppose, not her mother.’ ‘Oh,’ said Lord Will, quite confused; what between the transference of the heirship, the inattention of his friend to his plea that his father was the head of the family, which to himself seemed to be a condition of importance, and the extremely big word that Leo had used, this young man, who was not clever, but who was not at all a bad fellow notwithstanding the mission in which his dull intelligence had not seen any harm, was quite bewildered, and did not know what to think. ‘Yes,’ said Leo, ‘I don’t know much about English law, but Mab no doubt would be the heir; and any reasoning brought to bear upon her to make her accept a portion of her natural right in place of the whole, would be the same, I presume, as if you had stolen so much from her.’ ‘Oh, stolen! rubbish!’ cried Lord Will; then he explained ingenuously, ‘there was to be no reasoning brought to bear; I was to inform them simply that Uncle John had left--a legacy.’ ‘That would have been what I believe is called in English--lying.’ ‘Swinford! you mean, I think, to make me forget that I am your guest, in your house.’ ‘In French,’ said Leo, taking no notice, ‘it is called _mensonge_, and has sometimes interpretations more or less favourable. When you save your mother’s reputation or your father’s honour, as it is called, _mensonge_ is the word, and you are not judged too severely; but I have always heard that in England to lie was the worst offence.’