Theodore was silent for the most part after his inquiry about his cousin. He listened while the elder men talked, and gave his opinion when it was asked for, and showed himself a clear-headed man of business; but his depression was not the less evident. The thought of Juanita’s grief—the contrast between her agony now and her joyousness the day she was at Dorchester—was never absent from his mind; and the talk of the two elder men, the discussion as to the extent of her possessions, her power to do this and that, the house she was to live in, the establishment she was to keep, jarred upon him horribly. “By the conditions of the settlement, the Priory is to be hers for her life, with everything it contains. By the conditions of Sir Godfrey’s will, in the event of his leaving no issue, the Priory estate is to go after his widow’s death to Mrs. Grenville’s eldest son, or failing a son in that direction, then to Mrs. Morningside’s eldest son. Should neither sister leave a son surviving at the time of Lady Carmichael’s death the estate is to be sold, and the product divided in equal portions among the surviving nieces; but at the present rate at which the two ladies are filling their nurseries there is very little doubt there will be a surviving son. Mrs. Grenville was Sir Godfrey’s favourite, I know, and I can understand his giving her boy the estate, and thus founding a family, rather than dividing the property between the issue of the two sisters.” “I do not think anybody can find fault with his will,” said Lord Cheriton. “God knows that when I saw him sign it in my room in Victoria Street, an hour after his marriage, nothing was further from my thoughts than the idea that the will would come into force within the next fifty years. It seemed almost an idle precaution for so young a man to be in such a hurry to set his house in order.” “Do you think Juanita will decide to live at the Priory?” asked Mr. Dalbrook. “It would seem more natural for her to live here with her mother and me, but I fear that this house will seem for ever accursed to her. She will remember that it was her own whim to spend her honeymoon here. It will seem to her as if she had brought her husband to his death. Oh, God, when I remember how her mother and I suggested other places—how we talked to her of the Tyrol and the Dolomites, of Hungary, Norway—and with what a kind of childish infatuation she clung to her fancy for this house, it seems as if a hideous fatality guided her to her doom. It is her doom, as well as his. I do not believe she will ever be a happy woman again.”