"Are you leaving?" Lilian exclaimed foolishly. "I expected you to----"
"Felix left everything to you----"
"I had nothing at all to do with the will--I----"
"Oh no! I didn't suppose for a moment you had. Felix would never consult anybody in such matters. I'm not complaining. Felix was quite right. He made you his wife and he left you everything. It might have been different if I'd had no money of my own. But, thank God, I'm independent! And I prefer to have my own home." The tone was unexceptionable, and yet Miss Grig managed to charge with the most offensive significance the two phrases: "He made you his wife" and "Thank God I'm independent." It was as if she had said: "He raised you up from being his kept woman to be his wife--he made you honest--and he needn't have done!" and, "If I'd been at the mercy of a chit like you----!"
But Lilian, while she fully noticed it, was insensible to the offence. She was thinking as she sat huddled beneath Miss Grig erect:
"Who won? You didn't. I did. You thought you'd finished me. But you hadn't."
And added to this was the scarcely conscious exultation of youth and energy confronting the end of a career. The man for whom they had fought was dead and long decayed, but they were still fighting. It was terrible. Lilian's feelings were terrible; she realized that they were terrible; but they were her feelings. Worse, crueller than all, she reflected:
"One day you will come and swallow your pride and beg me humbly for a sight of his child!"
Miss Grig continued with wonderful dignity:
"As I say, I thought it proper to stay till you actually arrived, and formally hand over. Though really there's nothing to be done. I hope you'll find everything to your satisfaction. The servants will stay, at any rate as long as you need them. Of course, I told them beforehand how things are with you. The household accounts I've given to Mr. Farjiac to-day" (Mr. Farjiac was the solicitor). "And"--she opened her Dorothy bag--"here are the keys. Masters--that's the parlourmaid--will tell you which is which."