"You might just as well keep fifty or a hundred thousand dollars," he declared. "Mr. Singleton is willing to relinquish even so much as half of the fortune; and it is absolute folly--if you will excuse me--for you to throw away a comfortable independence, and retain only a sum which is paltry in comparison to the amount of the fortune, and to your needs of life."
"You must allow me to be the best judge of that," Marion replied, firmly.
And, as she held inflexibly to her resolution, the lawyer finally went away with the same baffled feeling that the Singleton cousins had experienced. "What fools women are when it comes to the practical concerns of life!" he said, from the depths of his masculine scorn. "They are always in one extreme or the other. Here is this girl, who, from what I hear, must have been willing to do anything to secure the fortune, now throws it away for a whim without reason!"
Meanwhile Marion, left face to face, as it were, with her accomplished resolve, said to herself, "What am I to do now?"
It was certainly a necessary question. To remain where she was, living with the state of Mr. Singleton's heiress, was impossible; to go to her uncle, who would be incensed against her on account of the step she had taken, was equally impossible; to stay with Helen, however much Helen in her kindness might desire it, was out of the question. Where, then, could she go?--where should she turn to find a friend?
Marion was pacing up and down the long drawing-room as she revolved these thoughts in her mind, when her attention was attracted by her own reflection in a mirror which hung at the end of the apartment. She paused and stood looking at it, while a faint, bitter smile gathered on her lip. Her beauty was as striking, as indisputable as ever; but what had it gained for her--this talisman by which she had confidently hoped to win from the world all that she desired? "I have been a fool!" she said, with sudden humility. "And now--what remains to me now?"
It almost seemed as if it was in answer to the question that a servant at this moment entered, bringing the morning mail. Marion turned over carelessly two or three papers and letters, and then suddenly felt a thrill of pleasure when she saw a foreign stamp and Claire's familiar handwriting. She threw herself into a chair and opened the letter.