As usual, Miss Morton tried to exercise her powers of generalship, and directed that they should all assemble in the drawing-room until recalled to learn the coroner’s opinion.
Mrs. Markham, unheeding Miss Morton’s dictum, went away to attend to her household duties, and Cicely went to her own room, but the others waited in the drawing-room. They were joined shortly by Tom Willard and Schuyler Carleton, who arrived at about the same time.
Mr. Carleton, never a robust man, looked like a wreck of his former self. Years had been added to his apparent age; his impassive face wore a look of stony grief, and his dark eyes seemed filled with an unutterable horror.
Tom Willard, on the contrary, being of stout build and rubicund countenance, seemed an ill-fitting figure in the sad and tearful group.
But as Kitty French remarked to Fessenden in a whisper, “Poor Tom probably feels the worst of any of us, and it isn’t his fault that he can’t make that fat, jolly face of his look more funereal.”
“And he’s said to be the heir to the estate, too,” Fessenden whispered back.
“Now, that’s mean of you,” declared Kitty. “Tom hasn’t a greedy hair in his head, and I don’t believe he has even thought of his fortune. And, besides, he was desperately in love with Madeleine. A whole heap more in love than Mr. Carleton was.”
Fessenden stared at her. “Then why was Carleton marrying her?”
“For her money,” said Kitty, with a disdainful air.
“I didn’t know that,” went on Fessenden, quite seriously. “I thought Carleton was hard hit. She was a magnificent woman.”