“If I refuse, I suppose the Court of Chancery will find somebody more capable, and certainly may easily find some one more willing than myself,” Captain Desfrayne said, almost irritably. “If it had been a boy, instead of a girl, would you have been so reluctant?” asked Mrs. Desfrayne, smiling mischievously. “That has nothing to do with it. I have to deal with the matter as it now exists, not as it might have been.” Mrs. Desfrayne glanced at her son from beneath the long, silken lashes that half-concealed her great blue eyes. It seemed so strange to hear that musical voice, which for nine-and-twenty or thirty years had been as soft and sweet to her ears, as if incapable of one jangled note, fall into that odd, irritable discordance. Paul was out of sorts and out of humor, she could see. Was he telling her _all_ the truth? Never, in all those years of his life, most of which had passed under her own vision, had he uttered, looked, or even seemed to harbor one thought that he was not ready and willing for his mother to take cognizance of. Why, then, this possible reticence, blowing across their lifelong confidence like the bitter northeast wind ruffling over clear water, turning its surface into a fragile veil of ice? The young man was out of humor, for his meeting with the fellow whom he had just encountered almost on the threshold of the house had brought up many recollections he would fain have banished--memories of a time he would gladly have erased from the pages of his life--a time whereof his mother knew nothing. Mrs. Desfrayne, however, shot very wide of the mark when she ascribed his alteration of look and manner to some foreknowledge of the girl in question. He spoke nothing but the truth in saying that he had never as much as heard of her before receiving the letter that lay between his mother’s fingers. With the electric sympathy of strong mutual affection, Paul Desfrayne quickly perceived the ill effect his coldness had upon his mother; and with an effort he cleared his countenance, and assumed a shadow of his formerly smiling aspect. He looked down, and appeared to consider. Then, raising his eyes to those of his mother, he said, with an air of resignation: “I suppose it would be best to see the lawyers, and hear what they have to say. It is a most intolerable bore. I don’t know what I have done to merit being visited for my sins in this fashion.” “You don’t remember what you happened to do for this eccentrically disposed old man?” Paul Desfrayne shrugged his shoulders.