At this Gideon Anab made a hasty exit. He had no fancy for any further chastisement at the hands of the irate Major. After all a fiver with a whole skin was better than nothing with a damaged one, and he had a very shrewd idea that that was how it would be with him if he remained. So he left the Major to reflect on his position.
It was not a pleasant one which ever way he looked at it. On the one hand he was liable at any moment to lose everything by the production of the lost will; on the other he was placed in the position of compounding a felony, or at least of retaining and enjoying what he knew was not his to enjoy. If he took what he held to be the only right course open to him the result would be very far reaching. For himself he did not care so much, although he was in nowise insensible to the difference between some five hundred—which was the amount of his private means—and five thousand a year. But he really did not like to think what the effect would be upon Hilda, when that young lady was called upon to give up all that she had schemed for—he knew well by this time that she had schemed for it. And upon Miriam too this reversal of fortune would fall hardly, since it would mean the speedy and inevitable degradation of her husband. As he turned all this over in his mind, he was sorely tempted for her sake and for his wife's to leave things as they were.
There was just one loop-hole of escape!—that Mrs. Darrow might have destroyed the will. In that case no possible good was to be achieved by exposing her. He would let her see that he knew her for what she was. But a scandal was a thing he had a loathing of, and would never be the one to bring about. Of course all this was based upon the hypothesis that Shorty had told the truth. There was always the possibility that he had not.
Hilda arrived home for dinner in the best of tempers. Her visit had been to her thoroughly successful, since not only had she been the best looking and best dressed woman in the room, but had been told so, which was infinitely more important. Her husband told her of the arrangement he had made for her to take Dicky to Rosary Mansions the following afternoon. She was pleased to express herself delighted. It, too, was likely to be a highly successful visit from her point of view. She, the mistress of Thorpe Manor, conferring her presence upon Dicky's quondam governess now married to the man whom she had jilted, and resident in one of the meaner tenements of West Kensington, was a picture in which she could see herself quite plainly. Still she was prepared to be cordial.
When Miriam came to welcome her she was surprised at the warmth of her manner. Dicky of course was embraced and made much of.
"And how is the doctor, Hilda, and your mother?" asked Miriam.
"Oh, they are pretty well, thank you—they are better off now, of course, and the children are at school. But the house is much the same, dirty as ever. Sometimes when I drive round to see them, I wonder how I ever managed to support existence in that poky place. I hate small rooms, don't you?"
Miriam did not reply.
"And Mrs. Darrow—how is she?" was all she said.
"Oh, I believe much the same. I don't see much of her, you know. In fact, I was obliged to give her clearly to understand that I was mistress in my own house. As a result she has no great love for me, you may imagine. However, she keeps out of the way, and that's the great thing."