“Who will have all his money?” asked the lady of the house.
“His daughter, of course,” said her nephew. “It will be a lucky dog who marries her.”
“Try and be that dog,” said the lady. “And now don’t you think we’ve chanted Mr. Massarene’s requiem long enough? He wasn’t an attractive person. Let us play again.”
But her guests did not accept her invitation; they were all more or less excited by the news. Who could tell what scandals might not come to the surface when the dead man’s papers were unsealed? Meantime they made as much scandal as they could themselves—raking up old stories, computing how much this, that, or the other owed him, whose debts of honor he had paid, and what personages, crowned and uncrowned, were in his hands.
“What tremendous sport his daughter will have,” said one of the ladies. “If I were she I should bring all the bigwigs into court for principal and interest. But she doesn’t look as if she liked fun.”
Mouse was on thorns as she listened. For the first time in her life people seemed to her odiously heartless. This event mattered so enormously to her that she wondered the earth did not stand still. For the first time in her life she felt the chill of that indifference in others which is at times so hard to bear. Her hostess, who was one of the many pretty women who kissed and caressed her, and hated her, watched her with suspicious amusement. “I never saw Sourisette so upset in her life,” she thought. “Did the man pay her an annuity of twenty thousand a year which dies with him?”
It appeared to her that nothing less than some great pecuniary loss could possibly thus affect the nerves of her friend.
Mouse went away from the card-party early.
“One would think the dead cad had held a lot of her ‘bad paper,’” said the lady with a cruel little laugh, as she returned from embracing her guest affectionately on the head of the staircase.
“I dare say he did,” answered her nephew. “I wonder what he’ll cut up for? Twelve million sterling, they say, not counting the house and the estates.”