Another woman who was not amused by Hans Caspar's will was the woman who benefited by it.
Anne Caspar had the qualities of her kind. If she was hard, she was passionately loyal and genuinely devoted to her Ned. When she had told Mr. Trupp that her marriage had been a love-match she had but spoken the truth as regards her part in it. Therefore on the morning she opened the letter from the lawyers announcing that she had come by miracle into what was for the daughter of the Ealing tobacconist a fortune, she felt a slight had been put upon her husband and was perturbed accordingly.
With pensive face she went into the study, wearing the long blue over-all in which Edward Caspar had first seen her.
Her husband stood in his shirt-sleeves, pipe in mouth, a loose, round-shouldered figure, splashing away with vague enthusiasm at a canvas in the sunny bow-window.
She realized in a moment that she had caught him in one of his rare uplifted moods.
"Ned," she said.
"What-ho, my Annie!"
"Your father's left us £300 a year."
He chuckled as he painted, one eye on the gleaming mystery of the Downs.
"Been opening my letters, you burglar?"