beard. "If there isn't any will, they're the heirs. I used to be a sort
of wild-cat lawyer, and I know that much law."

"Yes," said Clementina. "She left them five thousand dollas apiece. She
said she wished she had made it ten."

"I guess she's made it a good deal more, if she's made it anything. Miss
Claxon, don't you understand that if no will turns up, they come in for
all her money.

"Well, that's what I thought they ought to do," said Clementina.

"And do you understand that if that's so, you don't come in for
anything? You must excuse me for mentioning it; but she has told
everybody that you were to have it, and if there is no will--"

He stopped and bent an eye of lack-lustre compassion on the girl, who
replied, "Oh, yes. I know that; it's what I always told her to do. I
didn't want it."

"You didn't want it?"

"No."

"Well!" The vice-consul stared at her, but he forbore the comment that
her indifference inspired. He said after a pause, "Then what we've got
to do is to advertise for the Michigan relations, and let 'em take any
action they want to."

"That's the only thing we could do, I presume."

This gave the vice-consul another pause. At the end of it he got to his
feet. "Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Claxon?"

She went to her portfolio and produced Mrs. Lander's letter of credit.
It had been made out for three thousand pounds, in Clementina's name as
well as her own; but she had lived wastefully since she had come abroad,
and little money remained to be taken up. With the letter Clementina
handed the vice-consul the roll of Italian and Austrian bank-notes which
she had drawn when Mrs. Lander decided to leave Venice; they were to the
amount of several thousand lire and golden. She offered them with the
insensibility to the quality of money which so many women have, and
which is always so astonishing to men. "What must I do with these?" she
asked.

"Why, keep them! returned the vice-consul on the spur of his surprise.

"I don't know as I should have any right to," said Clementina. "They
were hers."

"Why, but"--The vice-consul began his protest, but he could not end it
logically, and he did not end it at all. He insisted with Clementina
that she had a right to some money which Mrs. Lander had given her
during her life; he took charge of the bank-notes in the interest of the
possible heirs, and gave her his receipt for them. In the meantime he
felt that he ought to ask her what she