"I hinted that, but she only smiled. I think she must have gone thoroughly into that before she took any step. And then she looked at him, and he said like a parrot that it was time he took his proper place in the world and managed his own affairs." "I never in my life heard such cheek." "After a bit I sent away Harry. He looked at her first before he obeyed, and she signed to him to go. She has got absolute control over him. And I tried to talk to her. She was very hard and bitter at first, and twitted me with having to put up with her as a sister-in-law. But I could not help being sorry for her. She was ashamed, I'm sure, of what she'd done, though she tried to carry it off with a high hand. She's not altogether a bad woman." "Isn't she? Well, she's near enough to satisfy me. I don't know what you call bad if kidnapping that poor softy isn't. But the marriage can't hold. It's ridiculous." "She says it will, and I think she'll prove to be right. She is a shrewd woman, and after all Harry is twenty-three. Besides, mother's always stuck to it that he was only backward, and she got together medical evidence to attest her view. Mother has always wanted to guard against Harry being passed over." "Dick could leave the property to anyone he liked. It wasn't entailed. He was perfectly free to leave it to Jones, if he wanted to. Poor Jones! He's down with gout at the Lion. He won't get a shilling." "Yes. But mother foresaw that Dick might never get a will made. He never could get anything done. And I am afraid, Roger, that if he _had_ made a will, mother would have got hold of it if she could." "Janey!" said Roger, deeply shocked. "You don't know what you're saying." "Oh yes, I do. I feel sure, if poor Dick had made a will, Aunt Jane and mother between them would have----" "Would have what?" "Would have destroyed it." "You simply don't know what you're saying. No one destroys a will. It's a very serious crime, punishable by law. And you are accusing your own mother of it." "Mother has done some strange things in her time," said Janey firmly. "It's no good talking about it or thinking about it, but Jones told me that when she went to Paris last autumn she looked through all Dick's papers, and went to see his lawyer." "I went to see him too, and he told me she had been, and had been very insistent that Dick had made a will and left it in his charge, and said that he wanted to make some alteration in it." "Last autumn! But Dick was not capable then of wishing anything." "Last autumn, I tell you, since his illness." They both looked at each other. "Well, it's no use thinking of that at this moment," said Janey. "The question is, what is to be done about Nurse?" "Pay her up, and pack her off at once." "She's gone already. She said it was best that she should go. I've telegraphed for another. But she'll come back as Harry's legal wife, Roger, I do believe." "This medical evidence in Harry's favour--where does Aunt Louisa keep it?"