"Macdonald will look after you," she said. "Make him get you anything you want."
"Thanks," said Rackham. "I'll have something before I go. I meant to ask him for a whisky and soda, but he shot us in here.—I thought the old chap seemed a bit excited."
"Yes," said Lady Henrietta. "They were all so devoted to Barnaby. Naturally they share my feelings—" She paused significantly, and he could see that she was watching Julia. "My son has given me a legacy.... He has left me his wife."
"How sweet of you to put it like that!" said Julia.
She had established herself on the sofa without an instant's delay, taking figurative possession, too self-absorbed to appreciate any by-play. Her head was full of the tardy capitulation of her fellow-mourner, and she, in her own eyes, was the principal figure here. But Rackham, looking on, all but shouted.
"What?" he said. "Poor old Barnaby! Married? Good Lord! how did it come about?"
Julia turned round and stared at him.
"Lord Rackham!" she said. "Are you mad?"
Lady Henrietta made a motion with her hand towards the girl sitting in the background. She could not trust herself to speak to the woman whose outrageous complacency had survived her blow.
"My dear," she said, "this is your husband's cousin. He gets everything when I die—things are so wickedly entailed in this family—except a pittance I mean to scrape up for you. You know I don't chatter, Rackham. You can understand I didn't care to set the neighbourhood talking until I had Susan here."