Isobel was penitent.
"I am sorry," she said prettily, and Helen hastily introduced the subject of automobiles, concerning which she knows very little.
I sought out Fawcett on the porch after dinner.
"About Mrs. Drainger," he said. "How did you know?"
"I am, I suppose, her lawyer—or was, rather," I explained. "I have her will."
"I thought soulless corporations and bloated bondholders were more your line."
"They are," I said, and briefly recounted how I had come to be Mrs. Drainger's attorney.
Fawcett's cigar glowed in the dark. His wicker chair creaked as he shifted his weight.
"The daughter is a curious creature," he observed slowly, "something uncanny about her, even devilish. Somehow I picture her striding up and down the shabby rooms like a lioness. The town has grown, the neighborhood changed, and I don't believe either of them was aware of it. They lived absolutely in the past. So far as I could see they hated each other—not, you understand with any petty, feminine spite, but splendidly, like elemental beings. I never went into the house without feeling that hot, suppressed atmosphere of hate. And yet there they were, tied together, as absolutely alone as though they had been left on a deserted island.
"Tied together—I fancy that's it. Emily could, of course, have gone away. And yet I have a queer fancy, too, that so long as Mrs. Drainger wore her veil the girl could not leave; that if she had once uncovered her face the tie between them would have been broken. The old lady knew that, certainly, and I think Emily knew it, too, and I fancy she must have tried again and again to lift the covering from her mother's face. But Mrs. Drainger—she was will incarnate—was always just too much for her."