“She looks like a char-woman,” he reflected, as he watched her coming.
She flung herself into a chair.
“Oh, Lionel!” she said, “what do you think!”
He asked “What?” without much interest, expecting to hear that cotton stockings were so much dearer, or some other Minnie news. She pulled a bulky paper out of her hand-bag.
“Horace’s will!” she said, “and he hasn’t left you a penny. The lawyer told me this is a new one, made only a month ago. And that he’d been arranging a trust fund or something of the sort for you—something all tied up, so you could only touch the interest—and then, before he’d signed anything, he died. Oh, Lionel! Not a penny!”
IV
Then, too, he might have foreseen and prevented her next step, but again he failed to do so, because it was a bit beyond his imagination. She wrote a terrific letter to Julie, telling her she was defrauding Lionel of his rights, that she knew Horace’s intentions, and ought, if she had any feeling of honour, to carry them out.
Julie replied briefly:
“You won’t get a red cent out of me, now or any other time. I’m sorry for Lionel, but he has got to lie in the bed he’s made.”
Lionel didn’t even reproach Minnie for having written. What was the use? His humiliation couldn’t be hidden from any one.