"About Mrs. Drainger," he said. "How did you know?"
"I am, I suppose, her lawyer--or was, rather," I explained. "I have her
will."
"I thought soulless corporations and bloated bondholders were more your
line."
"They are," I said, and briefly recounted how I had come to be Mrs.
Drainger's attorney.
Fawcett's cigar glowed in the dark. His wicker chair creaked as he
shifted his weight.
"The daughter is a curious creature," he observed slowly, "something
uncanny about her, even devilish. Somehow I picture her striding up and
down the shabby rooms like a lioness. The town has grown, the
neighborhood changed, and I don't believe either of them was aware of
it. They lived absolutely in the past. So far as I could see they hated
each other--not, you understand with any petty, feminine spite, but
splendidly, like elemental beings. I never went into the house without
feeling that hot, suppressed atmosphere of hate. And yet there they
were, tied together, as absolutely alone as though they had been left on
a deserted island.
"Tied together--I fancy that's it. Emily could, of course, have gone
away. And yet I have a queer fancy, too, that so long as Mrs. Drainger
wore her veil the girl could not leave; that if she had once uncovered
her face the tie between them would have been broken. The old lady knew
that, certainly, and I think Emily knew it, too, and I fancy she must
have tried again and again to lift the covering from her mother's face.
But Mrs. Drainger--she was will incarnate--was always just too much for
her."