“‘London, September 30.
“‘My dear Cora: I don’t know whether you will thank me or not, but I feel that some one ought to warn you, if only that you may pull yourself together to meet what is coming. Your house is built of cards, and it is only a question of days, perhaps of hours, when it will be pushed over. Your husband is not the heir, after all. I am truly in great grief at the thought of what this will mean to you, and I can only hope that you will believe me when I sign myself,
“‘Your sincerely affectionate sister,
“‘Frances.’”
The two women exchanged a tense look in which sheer astonishment encountered terror, and mingled with it.
“No, I know nothing of this,” faltered Edith, more in response to the other’s wild eyes than to the half-forgotten inquiries that had prefaced the reading of the letter.
“No trick of a child, eh? What do they call it, posthumous?” Cora panted, still with the rough voice which had shaken off the yoke of tuition.
Edith lifted her head. “That is absurd,” she answered, curtly.
As they confronted each other thus, a moving shadow outside caught their notice. Instinctively turning their eyes, they beheld through the glass a stranger, a slender young man with a soft hat of foreign fashion, striding across the lawn away from the house. He held his head high in the air, and they could see that the hands carried stiffly outstretched at his sides were clenched.
“He struts across the turf as if he owned it,” said Edith, clutching vaguely at the meaningless relief which this interruption seemed to offer.