Descending the stairs, Mrs. Gallilee and Ovid met the footman. “Mr. Mool is in the library, ma’am,” the man said.
“Have you anything to do, Ovid, for the next half-hour?” his mother asked.
“Do you wish me to see Mr. Mool? If it’s law-business, I am afraid I shall not be of much use.”
“The lawyer is here by appointment, with a copy of your late uncle’s Will,” Mrs. Gallilee answered. “You may have some interest in it. I think you ought to hear it read.”
Ovid showed no inclination to adopt this proposal. He asked an idle question. “I heard of their finding the Will—are there any romantic circumstances?”
Mrs. Gallilee surveyed her son with an expression of good-humoured contempt. “What a boy you are, in some things! Have you been reading a novel lately? My dear, when the people in Italy made up their minds, at last, to have the furniture in your uncle’s room taken to pieces, they found the Will. It had slipped behind a drawer, in a rotten old cabinet, full of useless papers. Nothing romantic (thank God!), and nothing (as Mr. Mool’s letter tells me) that can lead to misunderstandings or disputes.”
Ovid’s indifference was not to be conquered. He left it to his mother to send him word if he had a legacy “I am not as much interested in it as you are,” he explained. “Plenty of money left to you, of course?” He was evidently thinking all the time of something else.
Mrs. Gallilee stopped in the hall, with an air of downright alarm.
“Your mind is in a dreadful state,” she said.
“Have you really forgotten what I told you, only yesterday? The Will appoints me Carmina’s guardian.”