"It was a cruel will," she murmured. "My husband and I had differences; in fact, we have lived apart for many years. Still—" She broke off. "You know, of course, that he went wrong—took to living with natives and adopted their horrible ways—in the end, I believe, turned Hindu."
"God bless my soul! But he used to write regularly—up to the end."
"No doubt." The two words were full of spiteful meaning, though what that meaning was Parson Jack could not guess.
"His letters gave no hint of—of this."
Again Mrs. Flood's bitter smile gave him—politely—the lie.
"He drank, too," she went on, after a cold pause. "I had always supposed it was the one thing those natives didn't do. We thought of contesting the will on the ground of undue influence and his mind being gone."
"Did Lionel leave them much, then?"
"'Them'?" she queried.
"His friends over there—the natives."
"He left nothing but this legacy of five thousand pounds, and the residue in equal shares to his poor family." Here her handkerchief came into play again. "Only, as it turns out, there isn't any residue— scarcely a penny more when all is realised—except the pension, of course." Unmasking her batteries with sudden spite, she added, "Even between you I couldn't be robbed of that!"