of her but me," came the same irritating
voice. "Aren't you going to tell us?"

"Merely a patient of mine," said Fawcett impolitely. "She has just
died--at an advanced age."

It was cruel, but justified.

Isobel was penitent.

"I am sorry," she said prettily, and Helen hastily introduced the
subject of automobiles, concerning which she knows very little.

I sought out Fawcett on the porch after dinner.

"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."

I told him about the provisions of her will.

"Ah," he said, "it is even clearer now. My theory is right. The veil
was, as it were, the symbol that held them together. But now, I wonder,
does the will represent the old lady's revenge, or her forgiveness?"

"We shall know shortly," I interjected.

Fawcett nodded in the dark.

"Captain Drainger built the house," he continued inconsequentially,
"back in the forties for himself and his young bride, and, though it
looks bleak enough now, it w