hat came into his eyes.

"That's yours," said the vice-consul, sourly, almost savagely. "She
didn't give it to you without she wanted you to have it, and she didn't
expect you to pay her bequests with it. In my opinion," he burst out,
in a wrathful recollection of his own sufferings from Mrs. Lander, "she
didn't give you a millionth part of your due for all the trouble she
made you; and I want Mr. Orson to understand that, right here."

Clementina turned her impartial gaze upon Mr. Orson as if to verify the
impression of this extreme opinion upon him; he looked as if he neither
accepted nor rejected it, and she concluded the sentence which the
vice-consul had interrupted. "Because I ratha not keep 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 li