Richard Davenal was one of those thoroughly conscientious men--and there are a few such in the world--who could not be content to enjoy money to which another has more right. It was a creed of his--it is not altogether an obsolete one--that money so enjoyed could not bring pleasure in the spending, or good in the end. Lady Oswald had legitimate relations, who had looked for the money, who needed the money, needed it with a far deeper need than Dr. Davenal, and who possessed a claim to it, so far as relationship could give it them. Even as the conviction slowly arose to him that the news was true that he had been made the inheritor, so there arose another conviction, or rather a resolution, with it,--that he would never accept the money, that it should go over to its legitimate owners, no matter what trouble it involved. A resolution from which he never swerved. Never. Not even in the moment when a tempter's voice arose within him, whispering how well this legacy would serve to replace that great sum, the savings of years, which he had been obliged to part with only that very week. Partly to satisfy a debt of which until then he had known nothing, had he parted with it; partly as hush-money, to keep down that terrible secret whispered to him on the Sunday night. The thought certainly did arise--that it almost seemed as if this money had been sent to him to replace it; but he did not allow it to obtain weight. It would have been simply impossible for Dr. Davenal to act against his conscience. "I shall refuse the legacy," he remarked to Mr. Wedderburn. "I have no right to it." "What did you say?" asked the lawyer, believing he did not properly catch the words. "I shall not accept this money. It is none of mine. It ought to be none of mine. It must go to Lady Oswald's relatives." "But it is yours, Dr. Davenal. It is bequeathed to you in the will." "I don't care for the will. I should not care for ten wills, if I had no right to the money they bequeathed me. I have no right to this, and I will not touch a farthing of it." Mr. Wedderburn's surprise could only expend itself in one long stare. In all his lawyerly experience he had never come across an announcement so savouring of chivalry. The legatees he had had the pleasure of doing business with were only too eager to grasp their good fortune, and if any little inconvenient pricks of conscience were so ill-mannered as to arise, they were speedily despatched back again by the very legal thought--If I do take it I but obey the will. "There never was such a thing heard of as the refusing of a fortune legally bequeathed," cried the lawyer. "I daresay there has been, many a time. If not, this will be a precedent." "You'll be so laughed at," persisted Mr. Wedderburn. "You'll be set down--I'm afraid people will be for setting you down as a lunatic."