Marion could not but respond to his smile and what seemed to be the genuine though somewhat blunt friendliness of his manner. Yet when she spoke her tone was slightly haughty.
"Pray do not think of me," she said. "The fact that your father left his fortune to me was the greatest surprise of my life,--a surprise from which I have hardly yet recovered. Naturally, therefore, it will be no great hardship to give it up."
"But I don't ask you to give it up," replied the tall, dark man, hastily. "There is enough to divide, and I assure you I am not a grasping fellow. Ask Tom if I am."
Mr. Tom Singleton smiled. "If so," he observed, "you must have changed very much."
"I haven't changed a particle. I did not give a thought to my father's fortune when I left him: I was thinking only of freedom, of escape from irksome control. And I hardly gave it a thought during the years that I have been out yonder, thoroughly satisfied with my own mode of life. I should not be here now but for the fact that a lawyer--what is his name?--took the trouble to write and inform me that my father was dead and I disinherited. Naturally one does not like to be ignored in that way; so I replied, directing him to contest the will. But since I have come, heard the circumstances of the case, and--and seen you, Miss Lynde, I perceive no reason for any such contest. We'll settle the matter more simply, if you say so."
"Seen you Miss Lynde!" It sounded simple enough, but the eyes of this wild man, as he called himself, emphasized the statement so that Marion could not doubt that her beauty might again secure for her an easy victory--if she cared for it. But she did not suffer this consciousness to appear in her manner or her voice as she replied:--
"We can settle it very simply, I think. Shall we now put aside the preliminaries and proceed to business?"
"Immediately, if you desire," answered Mr. Singleton. He bent forward slightly, pulling his long, dark moustache with a muscular, sunburned hand, while his brilliant gaze never wavered from Marion's face. His cousin also looked at her, apprehensively as it seemed, and gave a nervous cough. She met his eyes for an instant and smiled gravely, then turned her glance back to the other man.