"I asked him yesterday," she said. "It was dreadful to speak to him on the subject, but I felt it my duty to do so. I felt I ought to know where I stood in regard to my fortune, because—because of the future. Andrew believes my brother is still alive. And that is why I must refuse to make a will in Margaret's favor. If, as you say, papa made the gravest of all mistakes in never pardoning mistakes, clearly my duty to his memory is to redress the mistake he made in the case of my brother in as far as it is possible for me to do so. Margaret will have ample means of her own. I cannot be ruled by Mr. Challoner's opinion."
Joanna rose and walked over to the window, standing exactly where Adrian had stood some ten minutes before. There seemed a definite purpose in her selection of the exact spot, both in the placing of her feet and the leaning of her shoulder against the window-frame. Her back was to the light. Adrian could not see the expression of her face distinctly. He was glad of this. He did not want to see it, for again he was conscious of shrinking from her.
"After all, Mr. Challoner may be wrong—as you yourself just now said, Cousin Adrian—in taking for granted I shall never marry. I may marry. But, whatever happens, I shall not leave any part of my fortune to Margaret. I shall leave two-thirds of it to Bibby, and the rest—"
Smallbridge threw open the library door.
"Mr. Challoner, ma'am," he said; and the Stourmouth solicitor, his Mongolian countenance quite strikingly devoid of all expression, ponderously entered the room.
II
THE DRAWINGS UPON THE WALL
CHAPTER I
A WASTER
It was still cold, but the skies were clear. The snow had been carted away and Paris was herself again; the note of her exhilarating, seductive, vibrant—a note at once curiously fiercer and more feminine than that of London.
René Dax, crossing the Place du Carrousel, stood for a moment listening to that vibrant note, sensible of its charm and challenge; looking westward, meanwhile, across the Tuileries Gardens and Place de la Concorde to the ascending perspective of the Champs-Élysées. The superb ensemble and detail of the scene, softened by lavender mist at the ground levels, was crowned by the blood-red and gold of a wide-flung frosty sunset—a city of fire, as the young man told himself, built on foundations of dreams!