Mr. Moze, hurrying too fast to meet the Bishop of Colchester, had met a greater than the Bishop. Audrey glanced an instant with a sick qualm at the outlines of the shape beneath the tarpaulin, and ran. In the dining-room, over the speck of fire, Mrs. Moze and Miss Ingate were locked in a deep intimate gossip. "Mother!" cried Audrey, and then sank like a sack. "Why! The little thing's fainted!" Miss Ingate exclaimed in a voice suddenly hoarse. CHAPTER III THE LEGACY Audrey and Miss Ingate were in the late Mathew Moze's study, fascinated--as much unconsciously as consciously--by the thing which since its owner's death had grown every hour more mysterious and more formidable--the safe. It was a fine afternoon. The secondary but still grandiose enigma of the affair, Mr. Cowl, could be heard walking methodically on the gravel in the garden. Mr. Cowl was the secretary of the National Reformation Society. Suddenly the irregular sound of crunching receded. "He's gone somewhere else," said Audrey. "I'm so relieved," said Miss Ingate. "I hope he's gone a long way off." "Are you?" murmured Audrey, with an air of surprised superiority. But in secret Audrey felt just as relieved as Miss Ingate, despite the fact that, her mother being prostrate, she was the mistress of the situation, and could have ordered Mr. Cowl to leave, with the certainty of being obeyed. She was astonished at her illogical sensations, and she had been frequently so astonished in the previous four days. For example, she was free; she knew that she could impose herself on her mother; never again would she be the slave of an unreasoning tyrant; yet she was gloomy and without hope. She had hated the unreasoning tyrant; yet she felt very sorry for him because he was dead. And though she felt very sorry for him, she detested hearing the panegyrics upon him of the village, and particularly of those persons with whom he had quarrelled; she actually stopped Miss Ingate in the midst of an enumeration of his good qualities--his charm, his smile, his courtesy, his integrity, et cetera; she could not bear it. She thought that no child had ever had such a strange attitude to a deceased parent as hers to Mr. Moze. She had anticipated the inquest with an awful dread; it proved to be a trifle, and a ridiculous trifle. In the long weekly letter which she wrote to her adored school-friend Ethel at Manningtree she had actually likened the coroner to a pecking fowl! Was it possible that a daughter could write in such a strain about the inquest on her father's body?