On her way home she stopped to leave cards at Blent, and was not surprised when Harry Tristram came out of his study, having seen her through the window, and greeted her.
"Send your trap home and walk up the hill with me," he suggested, and she fell in with his wish very readily. They crossed the foot-bridge together.
"I've just been writing to ask my relations to the funeral," he said. "At my mother's wish, not mine. Only two of them—and I never saw them in my life."
"I shouldn't think you'd cultivate your relations much."
"No. But Cecily Gainsborough ought to come, I suppose. She's my heir."
Mina turned to him with a gesture of interest or surprise.
"Your heir?" she said. "You mean——?"
"I mean that if I died without having any children, she'd succeed me. She'd be Lady Tristram in her own right, as my mother was." He faced round and looked at Blent. "She's never been to the place or seen it yet," he added.
"How intensely interested she'll be!"
"I don't see why she should," said Harry rather crossly. "It's a great bore having her here at all, and if I'm barely civil to her that's all I shall manage. They won't stay more than a few days, I suppose." After a second he went on: "Her mother wouldn't know my mother, though after her death the father wanted to be reconciled."