"Have you asked Pike and Ditton, Dick's London men?"
"Yes. I wrote to them days ago. They know of nothing. There is no will, Janey. We have got to make up our minds to it. Pritchard is coming over this morning about the probate, and I shall have to tell him."
Something fierce crept into Janey's gentle face.
"Oh, Roger, it is such a shame!" she stammered. "If ever any man deserved Hulver it is you."
"Dick once said so," said Roger. "Last time he was here, two years ago, that time he never came to the Dower House though I begged him to, and I went round the park with him, and showed him where I had cut down the oak avenue in the old drive. It went to my heart to do it, but he had left me no choice, insisted on it. And when he saw the old trees all down he was quite taken aback, and he said, 'Roger, it is you who ought to have had Hulver. You'd have kept it together, while I'm just pulling it to pieces stick by stick. I must reform, and come and settle down here, and marry Mary. By God I must.' That was the last time he was here, just before he sold the Liverpool property."
"Everything seems to be taken from you, Roger," said Janey passionately. "And to think that this unscrupulous woman will have absolute power over everything!"
"She will be able to turn me off," said Roger. "She will get in another agent—put in her brother, I should think. I always disliked her, and she knew it. Now she will be able to pay off old scores."
Roger looked out of the window, and his patient, stubborn face quivered ever so slightly.
It would have been a comfort to Janey to think that she should one day inherit Noyes, if there had been any question of his sharing it with her. But the long-cherished hope that they might some day share a home together had died. It had died hard, it had taken a grievous time to die, but it was dead at last. And Janey had buried it, delved a deep grave for it in the live rock of her heart.