"Why?"
"Well, didn't you say you felt the cold from the window, and it's bad for your liver?"
Her glance said:
"Am I not a clever woman?"
And his replied:
"You are."
"That's the end of that, I hope, darling," she remarked, picking up the old office-coat and dropping it with charming affected disgust into the waste-paper basket.
He shouted for the clerk, who entered with some letters for signature. Under the eyes of his wife Edwin signed them with the demeanour of a secretary of state signing the destiny of provinces, while the clerk respectfully waited.
"I've asked Maggie to come up for the week-end," said Hilda carelessly, when they were alone together, and Edwin was straightening the desk preparatory to departure.
Since her return she had become far more friendly with Maggie than ever before,--not because Maggie had revealed any new charm, but because she saw in Maggie a victim of injustice. Nothing during the week had more severely tested Hilda's new methods of intercourse with Edwin than the disclosure of the provisions of Auntie Hamps's will, which she had at once and definitely set down as monstrous. She simply could not comprehend Edwin's calm acceptance of them, and a month earlier she would have been bitter about it. It was not (she was convinced) that she coveted money, but that she hated unfairness. Why should the Benbows have all Auntie Hamps's possessions, and Edwin and Maggie, who had done a thousand times more for her than the Benbows, nothing? Hilda's conversation implied that the Benbows ought to be ashamed of themselves, and when Edwin pointed out that their good luck was not their fault, only a miracle of self-control had enabled her to say nicely: "That's quite true," instead of sneering: "That's you all over, Edwin!" When she learnt that Edwin would receive not a penny for his labours as executor and trustee for the Benbow children, she was speechless. Perceiving that he did not care for her to discourse upon what she considered to be the wrong done to him, she discoursed upon the wrong done to Maggie--Maggie who was already being deprived by the wicked Albert of interest due to her. And Edwin had to agree with her about Maggie's case. It appeared that Maggie also agreed with her about Maggie's case. As for the Benbows, Hilda had not deigned to say one word to them on the matter. A look, a tone, a silence, had sufficed to express the whole of Hilda's mind to those Benbows.