It was a check for five thousand dollars which Cousin Winnie extended in her trembling hand.
“Your—your Cousin Peter—left it to you!”
“Cousin Peter! Who’s he?”
“You wouldn’t remember,” said Cousin Winnie. “A—a second cousin of—your grandfather’s. Oh, Lucy! My dear, good child! Now you can go away!”
“But the check’s made out to you, and it’s signed L. B. Grey—”
“A legal form,” Cousin Winnie explained. “I myself shall be well and amply provided for. This check is entirely for you, Lucy.”
VI
Somehow, “The Maddened Brute” was a disappointment. It was truly, as the advertisements declared it, a tense and gripping drama of life in the raw, but the characters were all so very violent that it was rather a relief than a tragedy when any one of them was silenced by stabbing, drowning, and so on.
Mr. Ordway was a little tense himself. When Cousin Winnie had seen him in the historic cottage, he had appeared such a cheerful young man, and now he was so odd, so silent. He ordered a superb luncheon at the Ritz; he provided them with an unparalleled box of chocolates; he was, in material ways, a most satisfactory host.
But spiritually he was depressing. In the theater he sat on the aisle, next to Cousin Winnie, and whenever the curtain went down he kept asking her about her plans, in a low and alarmingly serious voice.