“Of course,” he went on, “his death was really of enormous advantage to me. They say that I shall have two or three thousand a year, instead of five hundred, paid quarterly at Cox's. He could not prevent it coming to me. It was my mother's money. He would have done so if he could, for we never disguised our antipathy for each other. Yet we lived together, and—and I had the nursing of him.”
Millicent was listening gravely without interrupting—like a man. She had the gift of adapting herself to her environments in a marked degree.
“And,” he added curtly, “no one knows how much I wanted that three thousand a year.”
The girl moved uneasily, and glanced towards the conservatory.
“He was not an old man,” Guy Oscard went on. “He was only forty-nine. He might have lived another thirty years.”
She nodded, understanding the significance of his tone.
“There,” he said, with an awkward laugh, “do you still believe in me?”
“Yes,” she answered, still looking away.
There was a little pause. They were both sitting forward in their chairs looking towards the conservatory.
“It was not the money that tempted me,” said Guy very deliberately; “it was you.”