“She isn’t going to die!”
“I wonder if Wilton Howard will inherit much. I wish, sometimes, we had made more of him. I dare say he’s not a bad fellow at heart; but a man is very easily led astray by a silly girl. However, if he inherits any of Rosamond’s money, it will put an end to that nonsense.”
Corinne was so shocked by this allusion to her cousin’s love-affair, which she herself felt to be a wonderful romance, that her tears ceased.
“You mean Mabel? Why, Mamma! I should think, if Mr. Howard ever gets any money, he’d want to marry Mabel. I’m sure Mabel loves him terribly. I always wish she’d tell me about it. But she never does.” She sighed.
Mrs. Witherby, furious at this sentimentality, slapped her daughter.
“Corinne! be quiet! Do you suppose I could afford to have Mabel leave me and marry? I need her. Who’d do the marketing and the errands, and see to your clothes? After my giving her a home, too. I hope she wouldn’t be so selfish and ungrateful. Besides she wouldn’t be a suitable match at all for a man with money. If Mr. Howard does inherit any of Rosamond’s money, he will be obliged to make a fitting marriage. It will be his duty to all of us. Roseborough will expect it. Oh, you make me furious! You’d give Mabel everything you own, or that you might own, if your mother didn’t watch you.”
Subdued by her mother’s hand and her torrents of talk, Corinne whispered:
“I wonder if he is upstairs? Do you think he could have got here before we did?”
“I don’t know. He hadn’t heard anything about it till I telephoned him. He has farther to come.” Then she added—to herself, rather than to the daughter who seemed to have so little natural instinct for the main chance—“I wonder if he knows what she has left him in her will? Villa Rose, of course. Well, I’ve always wanted to take hold of this room and make it....”
“Mamma! I hear wheels! It must be Mr. Howard.”