Topper, who distrusted fresh air even by day, shook his head in protest, but his eyes fell before the dark imperious gaze that had mastered his will for seventy-odd years. He had never expected to have a young mistress in his old age, and he and Andrew retired to the pantry and wept into two generous glasses of old port.
Gita followed Mr. Donald into the library and opened its windows herself. It was a very large room with books to the ceiling, galleries, alcoves, flights of steps. Over the paneled oak mantel was a half-length portrait of her grandfather, at which she had scowled more than once; it bore a fatal resemblance to her father. The room, when closed, had that subtle odor of death that comes from rotting calf, and, possibly, from those silent emanations of brains long still. But when the sunlight poured in and the salt winds from the Atlantic purified the air, it looked less like a tomb of dead thought, merely a dignified old library in a stately old manor house.
Gita took a chair close to one of the windows and Mr. Donald settled himself with a sigh of relief in a large leather chair by the central table.
“This has been a trying day,” he said, “and I am not as young as I was. I shall miss my old friend, who was a remarkable woman, Miss Carteret, a remarkable woman.”
“Yes,” said Gita sincerely, “she was. I wish I could have known her longer—and that she could have been sixty instead of eighty.”
Mr. Donald looked at her approvingly. Proper sentiments, certainly. Hardly to have been expected perhaps, brought up as she had been, and with her boyish hardness. He had never before seen a Carteret who did not look feminine, however imperious. He had met her twice before and had anticipated impatience, slang, and a total lack of respect. But Gita looked rather meek sitting there by the window and quite properly subdued. She had laid aside her hat, and her rough cropped head, which had excited her grandmother’s ire, and no less his own, was bent over a honeysuckle bush, inhaling its delicate fragrance.
It was a beautiful head. Mr. Donald studied it against the light, and with approval. Lines of face and head perfectly balanced. Set on a long throat. Small high ears. A spirited profile and the magnificent black eyes of the Carterets. It was something, at least, that this girl was a Carteret in looks. But what was she inside that almost blasphemous exterior? Had she any regard for tradition, or would she take the bit in her teeth, laugh at his advice, sell the manor in spite of her promise to her grandmother, and behave like a young colt generally? She looked as if her next step would be to wear trousers, and Mr. Donald, who gave the present generation of young people his unqualified disapproval, wished she were more like them and less like an absent-minded compound of Old Dame Nature. He was a mere sixty, but he had inherited the Carterets from his father and known many of them, although none that gave him a clew to this last of the line. However, he was used to trouble and generally knew how to deal with it.
He cleared his throat, adjusted his spectacles, and opening his bag, drew out a document.
“This is the last will and testament of your grandmother,” he said solemnly, “and, as is customary, it is my duty to read it to the family immediately after the final ceremonies.”
“Yes,” said Gita, smiling, “I always wanted to hear a will read. I know what is in it, but it will be fu—interesting, all the same.”