Haskins jumped up and began to walk up and down, as he was accustomed to do when much excited. "Then I am to understand that, if I marry Mavis, Major Rebb loses six thousand a year?" "Exactly. He reverts to his original five or six hundred, which apparently he possessed before getting his brother officer to make this preposterous will in his favor, as it practically is." Haskins stopped. "His brother officer?" "Yes! Durham was in a Goorkha regiment, and so was Rebb. Later, I daresay, Rebb exchanged to the West Indies. I always heard that he came from that place." "Yes. Jamaica," said Haskins mechanically, thinking of Geary. "So this is why Rebb has shut up the girl, and put about the rumor that she is crazy. The plotting beast!" "He's all that," nodded the solicitor, emphatically, "in that way he prevents Mavis ever getting a husband, and so, while she remains unmarried, he can enjoy his income--or rather her income--in a legal way." "In a legal way," echoed Gerald, disgusted. "Why, the man ought to be hanged and quartered." "You can punish him more by depriving him of his income." "Oh, I'll do that. So far as I am personally concerned, I don't care two straws for the income----" "Oh, come now. Human nature----" "I don't go by human nature," interrupted Haskins sharply; "I go by my own feelings. I would marry Mavis without one penny, since my five hundred a year and what I make by writing is enough to keep things going. But Rebb must be punished, and I shall do all I can to deprive him of this six thousand a year." "There is no necessity to bother," said Tod soothingly, "the thing acts automatically, as you might say. When Mavis becomes your wife the money is paid over--or rather the income is transferred to her on the wedding day. The sole chance that Rebb has of keeping his money is to prevent the marriage." "Oh, he'll do his best to do that," said Gerald, with a frown, "I'll tell you what, Tod, that man won't stop short of murder." "Oh, you shouldn't----" "Yes, I should. Mavis is under the impression that all girls are brought up in conventual seclusion, and are not allowed to see young men. Rebb, for obvious reasons, told her so. But she understands that she is to be taken into the world when she is one and twenty. Her twenty-first birthday is only ten months distant--nine months, in fact. When that time arrives she will want to come out. If Rebb lets her out she will probably be asked in marriage, and then he would----" "Murder her," finished Macandrew. "Not at all. Rebb is too clever a man to place his precious neck in a noose. When her birthday came, and she turned restive, he would simply have called in a doctor to pronounce her insane and unfit for marriage." "No doctor would dare to say that: Mavis is quite sane."