"Because I want to speak to you," replied Beaumont, leisurely closing the door and taking a seat. "I know it is not quite the thing to pay visits so soon after a death, but Miss Challoner and her aunt are, I believe shut up in their rooms, Munks and that serpent you call Jellicks are safe in the kitchen, so I came in at the back of the house quite unperceived to see you." "What about?" she asked stolidly. "I think you can pretty well guess," he replied coolly, "about the conversation I had with you the other day--I want your answer." "The answer is--no." "Is it, indeed--ah! we'd better chat over it for a time. I may persuade you to change your mind." "You'll never do that," she said with a kind of gloomy triumph, "never." "Indeed--we'll see," he retorted calmly; "by-the-way I hope you don't mind me smoking, but it is so deucedly shivery in this tomb of a house that it gives me the creeps." "You can smoke," she said curtly. "Thanks--you know I love my creature comforts." He rolled himself a cigarette, lighted it, and then blowing a thin cloud of blue smoke, crossed his legs and looked complacently at her. "So you say no?" he observed with a smile. "Of course you know the consequences?" "I do." "And you are prepared to abide by them?" "I am." "Noble mother! May I ask your reasons?" "Yes--and I will tell you my reasons," she said deliberately. "I half intended to agree to your scheme the other day, as I thought it would benefit my son--but now I have found a way to benefit him without participation in your villainy." "The deuce you have," said Beaumont curiously. "How clever you are--come tell me all about it." She smiled coldly at his evident uneasiness and went on speaking calmly with a certain malignant satisfaction which was not by any means acceptable to Mr. Beaumont. "I asked the squire before he died to help Reginald Blake, telling him I was the boy's nurse and anxious to see him settled in life, he refused at first but by working on his delusion about re-incarnation I got him to give Reginald a cheque for one hundred pounds." "Oh, and you think Reginald would prefer one hundred pounds down to ten thousand a year?" he said with an ugly look. "Reginald doesn't know anything about it; the squire signed the cheque and wrote a letter, enclosed them both in an envelope and sealed it with his arms, then I, by his directions, locked it up in his desk." "Where it is still?" "No, I have got it. I have it here," she said, producing the letter from her bosom and holding it up to him. "How did you get it?" he asked craftily. "I watched by the body the first night after death, and remembering where he had put the letter, I took his keys from under his pillow and obtained it, then I locked up the desk and replaced the keys." "Ah, perhaps you don't know that you have been guilty of a felony?" "I don't care," she retorted defiantly. "You won't tell?"