“I can’t help feeling a little hurt,” she murmured, producing a handkerchief of

the kind obviously not meant to be cried into. “Hurt, I mean, by Roger’s lack of

confidence in me. That twenty thousand pounds ought to have been left to

_me_—not to Flora. A mother could be trusted to safeguard the interests of her

child. A lack of trust, I call it.”

 

“You forget, Mrs. Ackroyd,” I said, “Flora was Ackroyd’s own niece, a blood

relation. It would have been different had you been his sister instead of his

sister-in-law.”

 

“As poor Cecil’s widow, I think my feelings ought to have been considered,” said

the lady, touching her eye-lashes gingerly with the handkerchief. “But Roger was

always most peculiar—not to say _mean_—about money matters. It has been a most

difficult position for both Flora and myself. He did not even give the poor

child an allowance. He would pay her bills, you know, and even that with a good

deal of reluctance and asking what she wanted all those fal-lals for—so like a

man—but—now I’ve forgotten what it was I was going to say!

 

Oh, yes, not a penny we could call our own, you know. Flora resented it—yes, I

must say she resented it—very strongly. Though devoted to her uncle, of course.

But any girl would have resented it. Yes, I must say Roger had very strange

ideas about money. He wouldn’t even buy new face towels, though I told him the

old ones were in holes. And then,” proceeded Mrs. Ackroyd, with a sudden leap

highly characteristic of her conversation, “to leave all that money—a thousand

pounds—fancy, a thousand pounds!—to that woman.”