“Yes,” he replied, “perhaps at that time he did not think of his heir. If it had been his own child--but we must be fair to him. Your son was not a very near relation, and he scarcely knew the boy.” “Not a near relation!” exclaimed Mrs. Mowbray, “but he was the nearest relation. There was no one else to count at all. A man’s money belongs to his family. He has no right to go and alienate it, to give a boy reason to expect a good fortune, and then to squander the half of it, which really belonged to Frank more than to him.” “You must remember,” said the minister, with a dreadful tightening at his throat, feeling that he was pleading for himself as well as for his old benefactor, “you must remember that the money did not come from the family--in which case all you say might be true--but from his own exertions; and probably he believed what is also written in Scripture, that a man has a right to do what he will with his own.” “Oh, Mr. Buchanan!” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “that I should hear a clergyman speak like this. Who is the widow and the orphan to depend upon, if not on the clergy, to stand up for them and maintain their rights? I should have thought now that instead of encouraging people who got round this old man--who probably was not very clear in his head at the end of his life--and got loans from him, you would have stood up for his heirs and let them know--oh! with all the authority of the church, Mr. Buchanan--that it was their duty before everything to pay their debts, all the more,” cried the lady, holding up an emphatic finger, “all the more if there was nothing to show for them, no way of recovering them, and it was left to their honour to pay.” The minister had been about to speak; but when she put forth this argument he sat dumb, his lips apart, gazing at her almost with a look of terror. It was a full minute before he attempted to say anything, and that in the midst of a discussion of this sort seems a long time. He faltered a little at last, when he did speak. “I am not sure,” he said, “that I had thought of this: but no doubt you are right, no doubt you are right.” “Certainly I am right,” she cried, triumphant in her victory. “I knew you would see the justice of it. Frank has always been brought up to believe that he would be a rich man. He has been brought up with this idea. He has the habits and the notions of a man with a very good fortune; and now that I am here and can look into it, what is it? A mere competence! Nothing that you could call a fortune at all.”