“Of everything.
Of infidelity, and worse than that.”
“What can be worse than infidelity?”
Suddenly she pushed me away, and rising from her chair went to the door and opened it.
“Nothing,” she said, “nothing in the world.
Now go away, and leave me to myself.”
I stood up slowly, and went to the door beside her.
“I am sorry,” I said,
“I did not mean to make you angry.”
“I am not angry,” she answered me.
“Never again,” I said, “will I ask you questions.
These were the last.
I give you my solemn promise.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Her face was strained and white. Her voice was cold.
“I had a reason for asking them,” I said.
“You will know it in three weeks’ time.”
“I don’t ask the reason, Philip,” she said, “all I ask of you is, go.”
She did not kiss me, or give me her hand.
I bowed to her, and went.
Yet a moment just before she had permitted me to kneel beside her with my arms about her. Why, in a sudden, had she changed?
If Ambrose had known little about women, I knew less.
That warmth so unexpected, catching a man unaware and lifting him to rapture, then swiftly, for no reason, the changing mood, casting him back where he had stood before.
What trail of thought, confused and indirect, drove through those minds of theirs, to cloud their judgment?
What waves of impulse swept about their being, moving them to anger and withdrawal, or else to sudden generosity?
We were surely different, with our blunter comprehension, moving more slowly to the compass points, while they, erratic and unstable, were blown about their course by winds of fancy.
Next morning, when she came downstairs, her manner was as usual, kind and gentle; she made no reference to our conversation of the night before.
We buried poor Don in the plantation, in a piece of ground apart, where the camellia walk began, and I made a small circle round his grave with stones.
We did not talk of that tenth birthday when Ambrose gave him to me, nor yet of the twenty-fifth that was to come.
But the following day I rose early, and, giving orders for Gypsy to be saddled, rode to Bodmin.
I called upon an attorney there, a man named Wilfred Tewin, who did much of the business for the county but had not hitherto handled Ashley affairs, my godfather dealing with his own people in St. Austell.
I explained to him that I had come upon a matter of great urgency and privacy, and that I desired him to draw up a document in legal form and language that would enable me to dispose of my entire property to my cousin, Mrs. Rachel Ashley, upon the first day of April, when it became mine by law.
I showed him the will that Ambrose had not signed, and I explained to him that it was only through sudden illness, followed by death, that Ambrose had omitted to sign it.
I told him to incorporate, in the document, much of what Ambrose had written in the will, that on Rachel’s decease the property passed back again to me, and that I should have the running of it in her lifetime.
Should I die first the property would go, as matter of course, to my second cousins in Kent, but only at her death, and not before.
Tewin was quick to understand what it was I wanted, and I think, being no great friend to my godfather—which was partly the reason I had gone to him—he was gratified to have so important a business entrusted to his care.
“You wish,” he said, “to put in some clause safeguarding the land?
As the draft stands at present, Mrs. Ashley could sell what acreage she pleased, which seems to me unwise if you desire to pass it onto your heirs in its entirety.”
“Yes,” I said slowly, “there had better be a clause forbidding sale.
That goes, most naturally, for the house too.”
“There are family jewels, are there not,” he said, “and other personal possessions?
What of them?”
“They,” I replied, “are hers, to do with as she pleases.”
He read the draft through to me, and I did not think it could be faulted.
“One thing,” he said.
“We have no proviso should Mrs. Ashley marry again.”
“That,” I said, “is not likely to happen.”
“Possibly not,” he answered, “but the point should be covered just the same.”
He looked at me inquiringly, his pen poised in the air.
“Your cousin is still comparatively a young woman, is she not?” he said.