“I hate leaving him, Ann,” she had said between the long bouts of coughing which shook her thin frame so that speech was at times impossible. “He’s so—alone. Philip represents nothing to him but an autocrat he is bound to obey. And Tony resents it. Any one who loves him can steady him—but no one will ever drive him. When I’m gone, will you do what you can for him—for him and for me?”
And Ann, holding the sick woman’s feverish hands in her own cool ones, had promised.
“I will do all that I can,” she said steadily.
“And if he does get into difficulties?” persisted Virginia, her eager eyes searching the girl’s face.
Ann smiled down at her reassuringly.
“Don’t worry,” she had answered. “If he does, why, then I’ll get him out of them if it’s in any way possible.”
Two days later, Ann had stood beside the bed where Virginia lay, straight and still in the utter peace and tranquillity conferred by death. Her last words had been of Tony.
“I’ve ‘bequeathed’ him to you, Ann,” she had whispered. Adding, with a faint, humorous little smile: “I’m afraid I’m leaving you rather a troublesome legacy.”
And now, nearly four years later, Ann had thoroughly realised that the task of keeping Tony out of mischief was by no means an easy one. Here, at Montricheux, however, she had felt that she could relax her vigilance somewhat. There was no temptation to back “a certainty” of which some racing friend had apprised him, and, as Tony himself discontentedly declared, the stakes permitted at the Kursaal tables were so small that if he gambled every night of the week he ran no risk of either making or losing a fortune.
The chief danger, she reflected, was that he might become bored and irritable—she could see that he was tending that way—and then trouble would be sure to arise between him and his uncle, with whom he was staying at the Hotel Gloria. She recalled his hesitation when she had asked him if he had been getting into mischief. Was trouble brewing already?