“Yes,” said Lucy’s calm, little soft voice. There was still occasionally the echo of a sob in it, as in a child’s voice after a fit of crying, but yet it was quite calm. “Will you write a check for him, if you please?” “You will drive me mad, Miss Lucy, before you have done!” cried the excited executor, “all for this woman, this young fellow’s mother, this object of your-- And you go and borrow from another man, borrow, actually--money--from another man, you, an unmarried girl! Oh, this is too much! I must put your affairs in Chancery! I must wash my hands of you! borrow money--from a man!” “But I don’t know who else I--could have borrowed it from. Sir Thomas is not just a man; he is a friend. I like him very much, there is nobody so kind. If I had asked Lady Randolph she would have insisted upon knowing everything; but Sir Thomas understands me--a little,” Lucy said. “Understands you--a little? Well, it is more than I do,” cried her guardian; but when he came to think of it, this complication silenced him, for if the young fellow at Hampstead had been the object of any childish infatuation Sir Thomas could not have been brought into it in this way; and if she had a fancy for Sir Thomas, it was clear the young fellow at Hampstead must be _out_ of it. She could not possibly, at her age, be playing off the one against the other. So Mr. Chervil concluded, having just as little confidence in the purity and simplicity of Lucy’s motives, as everybody else had; and he gave the check with groans of suppressed fury, yet bewilderment. “You don’t know the world, Miss Lucy,” he said, “though you are very clever. I advise you not to borrow from gentlemen; they are apt to fancy, when a girl does that sort of thing-- And I will not have it!” he added, with some violence. “You are my ward and under age, notwithstanding that mad codicil. If it were not that a great part of the money would go to your little brother in case we broke the will, by George, I should try it!” the outraged executor said. “Would it--to Jock? Oh, that would be a blessing!” cried Lucy, clasping her hands; then she added, the light fading from her face, “But that would be to go against everything papa said, for Jock is no relation to my Uncle Rainy. Of course,” said Lucy, with delightful inconsistency, “when I can do what I like, in seven years’ time, Jock shall have his full share, and if I were to die he would be my heir; you said so, Mr. Chervil, that made my mind quite easy. But I shall not be able to borrow from Sir Thomas again,” she added, with a laugh, “because he will not be here.”