Raymond Challoner gazed after her with a strange expression on his usually placid countenance, as he remarked to himself:
“It’s a very disagreeable procedure. I hope she won’t do anything desperate. Those high-spirited girls are apt to kill themselves, or something else equally as terrible. She’s tremendously in love with me, poor little girl; and it’s flattering, but not at all pleasant under the circumstances.”
Queenie Trevalyn walked straight up to her own room with the same proud, measured step.
Her mother, with a newspaper in her hand, was awaiting her in some trepidation. Her keen instinct told her as soon as she beheld her daughter’s marble-white face that in this instance surely the course of true love had not run smooth. Had it been as she feared, had the young man not received the story of her father’s failure kindly?
Without waiting for her mother to speak, Queenie announced, briefly:
“It’s all over between us, mamma; you are right, and I was wrong. It was my fortune that Raymond Challoner wanted, not me! So we parted!”
A shriek from her mother interrupted the recital of what took place.
“And it was for him that you threw over Mr. John Dinsmore!” groaned Mrs. Trevalyn, adding: “Just read that, Queenie! Oh, oh, oh!”
Mechanically the girl took the paper from her; the startling headlines on the first column on which her eyes fell told her of the wonderful news:
A fortune estimated at over three millions of dollars had come to John Dinsmore, the author, through the death of a relative, a London banker of note.