‘I suppose it is very wicked of me,’ said Justina, after a brief silence, ‘but I cannot help grudging those people their happiness in _his_ house. It makes me angry when I think of that cousin—Mr. Churchill Penwyn—who gained so much by James’s death. I remember his cold calm face as I saw it at the inquest. There was no sorrow in it.’ ‘He could hardly be supposed to be sorry. He and James had seen very little of each other; and James’s death lifted him at a bound from poverty to wealth.’ ‘Yes, I can never think of him without remembering that. He gains so much. The murderer with his brutal greed of gain little thought that he was helping another man to fortune—a man who in the evil wish may have shared his guilt.’ ‘You have no right to say that, Justina.’ ‘It is unjust, perhaps, but I cannot be temperate when I think of James Penwyn’s murder. Nobody thought of interrogating the man who profited so much by his death. You were suspected because you were not at your inn that night; but no one asked where Mr. Churchill Penwyn spent the night of the murder.’ ‘There was no ground for suspecting him.’ ‘There was the one fact that he was the only gainer by the crime. He should have been made to prove himself innocent. And now he is happy, proud of his usurped position.’ ‘So far as one man can judge another man’s life, Churchill Penwyn seems to me completely happy. His wife is a woman in a thousand, and devoted to him; but I shall have the pleasure of introducing you to her some day, perhaps, Justina.’ ‘Do not think of such a thing. I could never regard Churchill Penwyn as a friend. I hope never to see him again.’ Maurice Clissold saw that this feeling about James Penwyn’s successor was deeply rooted, and he argued the question no further. He was too happy in Justina’s society to dwell long upon discordant notes. They had so much to talk about, small as was the actual world in which they had mutual interest. Maurice had undertaken to show all the glories of London to the girl whose life hitherto had been spent in small provincial towns. Justina had ample leisure for sight-seeing, for Mr. Flittergilt’s original comedy proved an honest success, and there was no new piece yet in rehearsal at the Royal Albert Theatre. Nor had Mr. Elgood, comedian, any prudish notions about the proprieties, which might have hindered his daughter’s enjoyment of picture galleries and museums, abbeys and parks. He did not care for sight-seeing himself; for his love of art, he confessed honestly, was not strong enough to counterbalance certain gouty symptoms in his feet, which made prolonged standing a fatigue to him.