“Well, you can appreciate that she is deeply interested. If there is no objection, will you tell me what they are?”
“No objection at all. One is a death certificate; the other a will of which I am appointed executor.”
Glendenning’s throat went dry and he coughed.
“What is its tenor?”
“Everything to Revell.”
“What?”
“Everything Mike possessed he left absolutely to Victor Revell.”
Ragingly Glendenning clutched at the instrument.
“I’ll contest it!” he thought.
But he said:
“May I run in and look at it?”
For a second the answer delayed. Then it came:
“Yes, but it won’t do you a bit of good.”
“I’ll come, all the same,” said Glendenning, who swore, grabbed at his hat, and started.
IV
From mingling faces; from forms and features that appeared, disappeared, reappeared; from these and from tumults of farewells, Camille awoke.
Through the open window, she could see the sky, an unprecised gray that hesitantly would become blue, bluer, still bluer. As yet it was gray. It must be very early, she thought. Then at once she remembered. Mike was dead.
The fact stood out and hurt her. Over it, the night before, she had cried a little. Now again her eyes were wet.
During his mysterious absence, she had missed him, though not poignantly nor yet impatiently, for she had felt that he must return. Now he never could, and when he had been with her, she had treated him like a dog that is overattentive and therefore in the way. She wished that she had been less hard with him. His appearance had been distressing, but custom had so familiarized her with it that she had accepted it, as one may get to accept a rhinoceros in the back yard, provided the brute is there long enough.
She dried her eyes and, in a sort of retrograde vision, reviewed the incidents of the night before—Glendenning’s effort to show that if Mike were not a criminal, he would have returned; then the news of his death, the eclipse of Glendenning, and the brief afterwhile, during which she had learned from Revell what little there was to know.
That little, now that she reviewed it, seemed, like the sky, unprecised. Like the sky, there were voids in it, great stretches of nothing over which silence was spread. But then, in ten minutes, who can be exhaustive? And had there been as many as ten? Five, perhaps; six at most. Yet, during them, she had realized that, in addition to the appearance of this man, who looked as if he had stepped from a canvas signed “Murillo”—some canvas that pictured a young grandee—she realized that, in addition to this, which in itself is surely a lot, she liked the man himself. With the stranger, she had felt at home. This man, whom she had never seen before, had made her want to see him again. It was very extraordinary.
Love at first sight always is. Of the presence of that psychosis she was unaware. If she had been and had been cross-questioned regarding it, she certainly would not have blushed herself to death, but quite as certainly she would have lied. She had no Victorian ideals, but she knew what is nice and what is not and that, perhaps, is better.
Meanwhile, the sky had deepened. Through the window came the radiance of the April day. Later, when, in breeches and boots, she had breakfasted and was about to go for a run, Glendenning was announced.
Camille made a face. But, accepting the situation, she went into the drawing room where he stood, and where, for a superior young man, he looked very ugly.
“See here, Camille,” he at once threw at her. “Did that chap tell you how he did for Mike?”
Camille flicked with her crop at her boots.
“What chap?”
“Don’t beat about the bush. You know perfectly well that I mean Revell.”
“Oh,” said Camille slowly. “Mr. Revell, is it? Well, no, he didn’t say anything at all about himself—which is more than I can say for some people.”
Glendenning caught it and tossed it back.
“Some people, at least, are honest.”
Camille twirled her crop.
“Last night Mike was an outlaw. Now I suppose Mr. Revell is a cutthroat. Why, what is the matter with you, Arthur?”
Glendenning snorted.
“Matter? Matter enough! The matter is that we have got to fight him. He told you, didn’t he?”
“About fighting him? Certainly not, and if he had, I should have understood as little as I understand you.”
“What I mean is, didn’t he tell you about Mike’s will?”
“Not a word. Why should he?”
“Because Mike has left him everything. Everything, do you hear that? He has left him property that he had no right to leave him, property that my uncle intended for you. But he was blackmailed into doing it. That is the size of it.”
In the little tempest of words, Camille sat down. It was certainly very queer, she thought, and she said so.
“Queer?” Glendenning chokingly repeated. “Queer is not the word for it. It’s undue influence—felony, for all we know, State’s prison—”
Camille laughed. She could not help it.
“Why not the chair? But nobody ever intended to leave the money to you. What are you so hot about?”
“What?” In righteous indignation, Glendenning lifted his arms. “You ask me that? Can’t you see that it is on your account? Do you suppose I shall stand by and see you bunkoed? Not a bit of it! I’ll have the will set aside!”
“Yes?” said the girl with a treacherously innocent air. “And what would happen then?”
“We would share and share alike. I’d give you half.”
Camille cocked an eye.
“Give me?”
“Well, you see, as next of kin, it would have to pass through my hands.”
Then, at sight of the mocking eye, he extracted and flourished a handkerchief.
“But,” he resumed, “it would all be in the family. When we are married—”
“When we are!” Camille interrupted. “I have no intention of marrying you, not the faintest. And do stop waving that flag at me! I’m not a submarine. And how do you make out that Mike was blackmailed, as you call it?”
“Well, isn’t it obvious?
