CHAPTER XVI.

CHASTELARD.

"So you are really going to be an heiress, my dearest?" Mary Blanchet
said to Minola, when our heroine was settled at home again. "I knew you
ought to be, and would be if right were done; but right so often isn't
done. My brother will be so glad to hear it! but not as other people
might be glad, you know." For Mary began to be afraid that by a hasty
word she might be filling the heart of her friend with suspicion of her
brother.

"I don't know, Mary. Mr. Money, and others, I suppose, say so. I wish
it were not true; I am all right as things are, and I hate the idea of
gaining by this poor woman's death. I think I should not feel so if we
had been friends, and if I could think that it was like a kindly gift
from her, and that she wished me to have it. But it is all so
different. And then what do I want of it?"

"One can do so much good with money," said little Mary sighing. She was
thinking of her brother.

"Yes, that is true," Minola said, thinking of Mary herself and of what
she might perhaps do for her. "But don't tell any one about this,
Mary--not even your brother--if you can well help it," Minola added,
knowing what little chance there would be of Mary's keeping such a
thing secret from her brother. "It is all uncertain and only talk as
yet, you know."

"These things are never secret, dearest," Mary said with a wise shake
of the head. "Men always get to know of them. I think the birds of the
air carry the news abroad that a woman has money, or that she has not,"
and Mary sighed again gently.

"Do you see much of an alteration in the ways of men toward me already,
Mary? Do they hang around me in adoring groups? Do they lean enraptured
over me as I sweep the chords of the harp? Do they who whispered that I
sang like the crow before, now loudly declare that my voice puts the
nightingale out of conceit with his own minstrelsy?"

"Now you are only talking nonsense, dear; for we know so few men--and
then you don't play the harp, and you never sing in company. But, if
you ask me, I think I do see some difference."

"Already, Mary?"

"Well, yes, I think so; in one instance at least. Not surely that you
were not likely to have attentions enough paid to you in any case, if
you cared about them or encouraged them, and that, even if you hadn't a
sixpence in the world--but still----"

"But still it does enhance one's charms, you think? Come, Mary, tell me
the name of this merce