“Oh, yes. You’ll see that—when the time comes—I hope it’s a long way off, of course—she won’t live there.”
“Waldo’ll want to live there, I think.”
“No, he won’t. He’d want to now, if it fell in. But by the time it does, he’ll have had his mind altered.” He laughed good-humoredly.
I rather resented that, having a sentimental feeling for Cragsfoot. But it would probably turn out true, if Nina devoted her energies to bringing it about.
“Regular old ‘country gentleman’ style of place—which Briarmount isn’t. Sort of place I should like myself. I suppose you’d take it on, if Waldo didn’t mean to live there?”
“You look so far ahead,” I protested. “The idea’s quite new, I haven’t considered it. I’ve always regarded it as a matter of course that Waldo would succeed his father there—as the Rillingtons have succeeded, son to father, for a good many years.”
“Yes, I know, and I appreciate that feeling. Don’t think I don’t. Still that sort of thing can’t last forever, can it? Something breaks the line at last.”
“I suppose so,” I admitted, rather sulkily. If Waldo did not live at Cragsfoot, if I did not “take it on,” I could not help perceiving that Godfrey had fixed his eye—that far-seeing Frost eye—on our ancestral residence. This was a further development of the Dundrannan alliance, and not one to my taste. Instinctively I stiffened against it. I felt angry with Waldo, and irritated with Godfrey Frost—and with Nina too. True, the idea of Cragsfoot’s falling to me—without any harm having come to Waldo—was not unpleasant. But everything was in Waldo’s power, subject to Sir Paget’s life interest; I remembered Sir Paget’s telling me that there had been no resettlement of the property on Waldo’s marriage. Could Waldo be trusted not to see with the Frost eye and not to further the Frost ambitions?
“It seems queer,” Godfrey went on, smiling still as he lit his cigarette, “but I believe that Nina’s dislike of the place has something to do with that other girl—Waldo’s old flame, you know. She once said something about painful associations—of course, Waldo wasn’t in the room—and I don’t see what else she could refer to, do you? She’s a bit sensitive about that old affair, isn’t she? Funny thing—nothing’s too big for a really clever woman, but, by Jove, nothing’s too small either!”
“Like our old friend the elephant and the pin that we were told about in childhood?”