"Inheritance!" said I. "You mentioned the word before. I do not understand."
"Oh," said he, "it is a long story and a melancholy. My father drove me from the house, and bequeathed his fortune to an adopted daughter."
"Yes," said I quickly, "I know that too."
"Indeed!" and he stopped his toilette to stare at me. "Perhaps you are aware then that Helen Mayle, conscious of my father's injustice, bequeathed it again to me."
"Yes, but--but--you spoke of an immediate inheritance."
"Ah," said he, coolly, "there is something, then, I can inform you of. Helen Mayle is dead."
"What's that?" I cried, and started to my feet. I did not understand. I was like a man struck by a bullet, aware dimly that some hurt has come to him, but not yet conscious of the pain, not yet sensible of the wound.
"Hush!" said Cullen Mayle, and untying a string at his waist he let his dress fall about his feet. "It is most sad. Not for the world would I have come into this inheritance at such a cost. You knew Helen Mayle, perhaps?" he asked, with a shrewd glance at me. "A girl very staunch, very true, who would never forget a friend." He emphasised that word "friend" and made it of a greater significance. "Indeed, I am not sure, but I must think it was because she could not forget a--friend that, alas! she died."
I was standing stupefied. I heard the words he spoke, but gave them at this moment no meaning. I was trying to understand the one all-important fact.
"Dead!" I babbled. "Helen Mayle--dead!"