“Out of my presence, and never dare to enter it again so long as you live!” she said with fury, whilst she twisted her handkerchief between her hands as though it were Jack’s little throat that she was strangling.
Hurstmanceaux shrugged his shoulders, bowed to her slightly, and went out of the room.
To a more suspicious man the impression that she had some worse motive for her opposition than a mere vain reluctance to part with these ornaments would have suggested itself; but he was not suspicious, and he knew that women of her type would sell their souls to be smarter than their neighbors.
“Cocky only put me in his will,” he thought ruefully, “because he knew that I was up to her tricks, and should put the curb on her for the young un’s sake.”
He did his duty loyally; but the doing of it was extremely disagreeable to him. He could not help being fond of her; he never could wholly forget the time when she had been a little, saucy, lovely, bewitching child, resting her golden curls on his shoulder when he went home from Eton or Oxford.
CHAPTER XXIV.
When he went downstairs he summoned the major-domo into the library on the ground floor, where Cocky’s sporting literature still strewed the tables.
“Mason, her Grace leaves this house on the first of July,” he said to that functionary.
“Very good, my lord,” said Mason, with impassable countenance.
“You see, Mason,” continued Ronald, “the duchess is of course in a very altered position; if the duke had lived——”