"In wills there are often very stupid conditions and provisions which govern the disposal of the property. In this case there are no conditions or provisions, so that you enter into possession quite untrammelled. You understand me when I say quite untrammelled?" "I understand." "So that if at any time it seemed well to you to----" He stopped. She had begun to rise, and he did not know whether it would be wise to complete the sentence or not. She stood before him holding out her hand as she finished what he had begun--"To marry again I should run no risk of forfeiting the money." "Precisely." She smiled. "Thank you. I am a little tired, and am not able to express my sense of your goodness to me during this interview. But I am, I assure you, grateful. I am not thinking of marriage. You will, I hope, be able to get everything into order soon. I must go now. Good-bye." He saw her into the cab waiting for her at the door, and then walked back to his private office. "A remarkable woman," he mused, "a remarkable and very fine woman. But I suppose she's mad. There's a screw loose in the heads of the Davenport family, and 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.' Perhaps she took the taint from him. There was no screw loose in his business head. He was as sharp as razors, and as close as wax. I think she's mad, or perhaps she's only a rogue. I suspect his money was not over clean, but that's no affair of mine. She married Davenport, every one said, for his money. She lived with him all these years for his money, every one said--although, for the life of me, I can't see what good it did him or her; and now he's gone, and the money is all hers, and she talks of doing away with it. Oh, she must be mad, for I don't see where the roguery could come in, unless--unless---- Ah, that may be it. By Jove, I'm sure that's it! Byron says, 'Believe a woman or an epitaph?' But he didn't mean it. Byron hardly ever meant what he said, and never what he wrote. It's a pity he never turned his attention to law. He never, as far as my reading has gone, did anything with law except to break all of it he could lay his hands on--civil and divine--especially divine, for that's cheap, and he was poor. She's a very fine woman, though. But what is this I was saying? Oh, yes. The only explanation of her conduct is that Blake, the blackguard Blake, has asked her, or is going to ask her, to marry him, and that she wants to test him by saying she is about to give away all her money to charitable institutions. That's the root of the mystery. And then, when she marries him, she'll throw all the money into his lap, and he'll spend it for her, and gamble it away and beat her. Anyway, he can't make quite a pauper of her, for even she herself can't destroy her marriage settlement, and the trustees won't stand any nonsense. _Always_ 'believe a woman _and_ an epitaph.' I wonder what kind of an epitaph will she put up to Davenport? Something about his name always