it, if there isn't
enough without it."

The vice-consul gave way to violence. "It's none of your business whether
there's enough or not. What you've got to do is to keep what belongs to
you, and I'm going to see that you do. That's what I'm here for." If this
assumption of official authority did not awe Clementina, at least it put
a check upon her headlong self-sacrifice. The vice-consul strengthened
his hold upon her by asking, "What would you do. I should like to know,
if you gave that up?"

"Oh, I should get along," she returned, Light-heartedly, but upon
questioning herself whether she should turn to Miss Milray for help, or
appeal to the vice-consul himself, she was daunted a little, and she
added, "But just as you say, Mr. Bennam."

"I say, keep what fairly belongs to you. It's only two or three hundred
dollars at the outside," he explained to Mr. Orson's hungry eyes; but
perhaps the sum did not affect the country minister's imagination as
trifling; his yearly salary must sometimes have been little more.

The whole interview left the vice-consul out of humor with both parties
to the affair; and as to Clementina, between the ideals of a perfect
little saint, and a perfect little simpleton he remained for the present
unable to class her.

XXXV.

Clementina and the Vice-Consul afterwards agreed that Mrs. Lander must
have sent the will to Mr. Orson in one of those moments of suspicion when
she distrusted everyone about her, or in that trouble concerning her
husband's kindred which had grown upon her more and more, as a means of
assuring them that they were provided for.

"But even then," the vice-consul concluded, "I don't see why she wanted
this man to come out here. The only explanation is that she was a little
off her base towards the last. That's the charitable supposition."

"I don't think she was herself, some of the time," Clementina assented in
acceptance of the kindly construction.

The vice-consul modified his good will toward Mrs. Lander's memory so far
as to say, "Well, if she'd been somebody else most of the time, it would
have been an improvement."

The talk turned upon Mr. Orson, and what he would probably do. The
vice-consul had found him a cheap lodging, at his request, and he seemed
to have settled down at Venice either without the will or without the
power to go home, but the vice-consul did not know where he ate, or what
he did with himself except at the times when he came for let