Helena glanced up from her book, not without a slight shade of impatience.
“Who told you?” she asked. “Will you have some tea? It’s quite cold.”
“Much obliged. Oh, everybody told me—they were talking it over at the Club.”
“And supposing she had died,” continued Helena, carelessly, “of this diphtheria or brain fever, or whatever she had, then I suppose Dominé Rovers would have reigned at the Horst?”
“I suppose so,” replied Willie, eating a great hunch of plum-cake; “but you mustn’t ask me, because I don’t understand. However, it’s so idiotic that I dare say it’s law.”
Helena smiled.
“Really, Willie,” she said, “you are growing quite intelligent.”
“Oh, it’s not me,” confessed honest Willie. “Everybody was saying it.”
A tinge of disappointment stole over Helena’s mobile face.
“And doesn’t it seem utterly ridiculous and unjust that if Ursula Rovers marries again all the Helmont property will go to that Smith or Jones, or whatever his name may be? It’s shamefully hard on Gerard.”