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Jack had been quite honest with the woman he loved. He had told her of his talk with Radmore, of Radmore's immediate, generous response, and the cheque he had given which he, Jack, handed to her as a free gift. She had gone up to London fully intending to see the Pipers after she had cashed the cheque.
He had shown himself utterly unreasonable, and especially angry, nay enraged, with her, Janet, because he had been foolish enough to hope that she would take his part against Betty's father. Acting on a sudden impulse, she went upstairs, and, feeling a little ashamed of what she was doing, went into the room which was to be Godfrey Radmore's.
Before Radmore's eyes blotting out the noble, peaceful landscape, rich in storied beauty there rose an extraordinarily vivid phantasmagoria of vast masses of armed men in field grey moving across that wide, thickly peopled valley of lovely villages and cosy little towns.
The wide, fan-shaped window looked out on a formal rose garden. And then, all at once, Radmore's quick eye detected a concealed door in the wall, on which there were encrusted the sham book titles often to be found on the doors of an old country home library. Quickly he went across and, opening it, found it gave straight on to a corkscrew staircase.
It was too bad that he should worry her, after all she had done for him. As for his wife nothing would induce her to see Mrs. Piper. Neither did she wish Piper to come down to Beechfield. She was particularly anxious that the man should not learn of Godfrey Radmore's return to England. Unfortunately Radmore was on the lookout for a good manservant. She took up the other letter.
Janet Tosswill shook her head, and yet when she had shut the door behind her in her husband's study, almost the first words she uttered, after having told him of Godfrey Radmore's coming visit, were: "I shall never, never forgive him for the way he treated Betty. I hate the thought of having to be nice to him I wish Timmy wasn't his godson!"
Perhaps her most certain conviction had been that he would come back some day with a wife whom she, Betty, would try to teach herself to love; but never had she visioned what had now actually occurred, that is Radmore's quiet, commonplace falling-back into the day-to-day life of Old Place. All at once she heard Timmy's clear treble voice: "Hullo! There's Betty."
At a quarter to five the telephone bell rang and Jack languidly went to answer it. Then he came back into the drawing-room. "Radmore's had a breakdown," he said briefly, "he's afraid he can't get here till seven." Here was a disappointing anti-climax!
Doubtless many such wills were made under the stress of war emotion, but and it was here that Radmore's strange luck had come in the maker of this particular will had died within a month of making it.
When Godfrey had lived in Old Place, there had been a good cook, a capable parlourmaid, and a well-trained housemaid, as well as a bright-faced "tweenie" there, and life had rolled along as if on wheels. It was very different now. She wondered if Betty or Timmy had told the others of Radmore's coming visit.
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