"If he
had any brains in that monkey head of his," she said to herself in the
passage, "what a rascal he would be!"
Left by himself, Noel Vanstone became absorbed in anxious reflection
over the blank space in the advertisement. Mrs. Lecount's apparently
superfluous hint to him to be liberal in offering money when he knew
he had no intention of parting with it, had been founded on an intimate
knowledge of his character. He had inherited his father's sordid love of
money, without inheriting his father's hard-headed capacity for seeing
the uses to which money can be put. His one idea in connection with his
wealth was the idea of keeping it. He was such an inborn miser that the
bare prospect of being liberal in theory only daunted him. He took up
the pen; laid it down again; and read the anonymous letter for the third
time, shaking his head over it suspiciously. "If I offer this man a
large sum of money," he thought, on a sudden, "how do I know he may not
find a means of actually making me pay it? Women are always in a hurry.
Lecount is always in a hurry. I have got the afternoon before me--I'll
take the afternoon to consider it."
He fretfully put away the blotting-book and the sketch of the
advertisement on the chair which Mrs.
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