He made several attempts to speak, and then went on: "I suppose the truth is I counted on Dick doing something for me. He always said he would, and he was very generous. He's often said I'd done a lot for him. Perhaps I have, and perhaps I haven't. Perhaps I did it for the sake of the people and the place. Hulver's more to me than most things. But he told me over and over again he wouldn't forget me. Poor old Dick! After all, he couldn't tell he was going to fall on his head! There is no will, Annette. That's the long and the short of it. And so, of course, nearly everything goes to Harry."
"No will!" said Annette, drawing in a deep breath.
"Dick hasn't left a will," said Roger, and there was a subdued bitterness in his voice. "He has forgotten everybody who had a claim on him: a woman whom he ought to have provided for before every one else in the world, and Jones, Jones who stuck to him through thick and thin and nursed him so faithfully, and—and me. It doesn't do to depend on people like Dick, who won't take any trouble about anything."
The words seemed to sink into the silence of the September evening. A dim river mist, faintly flushed by the low sun, was creeping among the farther trees.
"But he did take trouble. There is a will," she said.
Her voice was so low that he did not hear what she said.
"Dick made a will," she said again. This time he heard.
He had been looking steadfastly at the old house among the trees, and there were tears in his eyes as he slowly turned to blink through them at her.
"How can you tell?" he said apathetically. And as he looked dully at her the colour ebbed away from her face, leaving it whiter than he had ever seen a living face.
"Because I was in the room when he made it—at Fontainebleau."