By the time she got back to the house she was calm and self-contained; she offered no explanation of her absence to anyone. When, in the big room upstairs, Alice begged that she might be allowed to drag her bed across, so that she could be near Moira in the night, Moira scornfully regarded her for a moment, and then dragged the bed across herself.
"What are you afraid of?" she demanded.
"I feel as if I should die," whimpered the other girl. "It's so awful. He's dead—and I feel that perhaps in the dark he might come in—as he used to do——"
"I wish he would," broke in Moira quickly. "Go to sleep; you can hold my hand, if you feel frightened."
The younger girl presently fell asleep, with the undried tears still upon her pink cheeks; a smile grew about her mouth as she lay there. The smile was answered by one in the face of Moira, but it was a scornful one. For her part she lay wakeful, with the tears gathering in her eyes quietly now and then, as old memories came back to her.
Meanwhile, Mr. Baffall was stubbornly fighting a battle. As he went on fighting it, he discovered that he hated the man in black more and more every moment, with a growing hatred; for Matthew Shandler was not to be moved in any way. They had been together to the house, but no will had been found; they had the testimony of Mrs. Baffall that Old Paul had declared his intention of doing it that very night of his death; which looked hopeless enough, on the face of it.
Mrs. Baffall had been early turned out of the room by the shoulders, gently enough, by her husband; because she persisted in bursting into tears, and in imploring Matthew Shandler to remember the children. Which, as Baffall put it afterwards, wasn't business.
Shandler, for his part, spoke with perfect justice, as the world knows it. The children were nothing to him, and were not related in any way to the late Paul Nannock. Right was right; and although Mr. Shandler was an exceedingly well-to-do man, as he admitted with some pride, the property belonging to Old Paul was most certainly his, unless someone with a better right put in a claim to it. And he referred Mr. Baffall, with a smile, to his solicitors.
Mr. Baffall waited until such time as he discovered that the battle was a hopeless one; then he closed the door, lest Mrs. Baffall be shocked; and he remembered, with sudden vehemence, certain language long since left behind with the sordid business that had made him rich. He gave vent to some home-truths and expressions of opinion that hurt no one; for the man in black was made of stronger stuff than Baffall supposed, and merely smiled in reply. When, finally, he left, with the knowledge that he had come conveniently enough into a very snug property, he wished Mr. Baffall "Good-night!" gently, and desired that that gentleman would make Matthew Shandler's farewells to his good wife.
There was a deadly quality about Matthew Shandler that could not in any sense be opposed. He did that which he had determined upon with quiet precision, and with absolutely no display of emotion; indeed, more than once, when bitter opposition was raised against him, he smiled and shrugged his shoulders and turned away. But he went on with the work nevertheless.