Miss Standing frowned at the word appalling, which she had written with one p and two l’s. It didn’t look quite right. She took another chocolate, struck out one of the l’s, put in another p, and continued;
I shan’t come back to school of course. After all, I am eighteen, and they can’t make me. I do wonder if I shall have a guardian. In books the girl always marries her guardian, which I think is too frightfully dull for words. You’ll have to come and stay with me, and we’ll have a frightfully good time.
She stopped and heaved a sigh, because of course Stephanie wouldn’t be able to come till Christmas, and Christmas, to use Miss Standing’s own simple vocabulary, was a frightfully long way off-nearly three months.
She stared gloomily into the rich and solemn room. It was a very large room, running from front to back of the big London house, and it had the ordered richness of a shrine rather than any air of everyday comfort. There were priceless Persian rugs upon the floor, dim with the exquisite colouring of a bygone age. The curtains were of historic brocade, woven at Lyons before Lyons ran blood in the days of the Terror. The panelling on the walls had come from a house in the Netherlands, a house in which the great Duke of Alba had lived. On this panelling hung the Standing Collection; each picture a fortune and a collector’s prize- Gainsborough; Sir Joshua; Van Dyck; Lely; Franz Hals; Turner. No moderns.
Miss Standing frowned at the pictures; she thought them hideous and gloomy and depressing. She hated the whole room. But when she began to think of what she would do to it to make it look different, she got the sort of feeling that there would be something almost sacrilegious about doing anything with it at all. A pink carpet now, and a white wall-paper to cover up all that dark wood. It was silly to feel as if she had laughed in church; but it was the sort of feeling she got.
She consoled herself with a very succulent chocolate. It had a nougat centre. The very sofa on which she was sitting was like a sort of stage funeral pyre, all purple and gold and silver.
“I wonder what I shall look like in black. Some people look so frightful in it. But that silly man who came to the fete with the De Chauvignys said I ought to wear it-he said it would flatter me very much. And of course people always do say that fair women look nicer in black than in anything else. It’s a frightfully dull thing to look nice in.” Miss Standing opened a little leather vanity case which lay beside the box of chocolates. She took out a powder puff and a tiny mirror and began to powder her nose. The powder had a very strong scent of carnations. A glance in the mirror never failed to have a cheering effect. It is very difficult to go on being unhappy when you can see that you have a skin of milk and roses, golden brown hair with a natural wave, and eyes that are much larger and bluer than those of any other girl you know.
Margot Standing’s eyes really were rather remarkable. They were of a very pale blue, and if they had not been surrounded by ridiculously long black lashes, they might have spoilt her looks; as it was, the contrast of dark lashes and pale bright eyes gave her prettiness a touch of exotic beauty. She was of middle height, with a pretty, rather plump figure, and a trick of falling from one graceful pose into another. She wore a pleated skirt of blue serge and a white woolen jumper, both very plain; but the white wool was the softest Angora, and the serge skirt had come from a famous house in Paris.
A door at the far end of the room was opened, William, the stupidest of the footmen, murmured something inarticulate, and Mr. James Hale came slowly across the Persian carpet. Margot had never seen him before. He was her father’s lawyer and that sounded dull enough; but she thought he looked even duller than that-so very stiff, so very tall, so narrow in the shoulder, and so hairless about the brow. She said “Ouf!” to herself as she got up rather languidly to meet him.
Mr. Hale had a limp, cold hand. He said “How do you do, Miss Standing?” and cleared his throat. Then Margot sat down, and he sat down, and there was a silence, during which Mr. Hale laid the dispatch-case he had been carrying upon a chair at his side and proceeded to open it.
He looked up to find a box of chocolates under his nose.
“Do have one. The long ones are hard, but the round ones are a dream.”
“No thank you,” said Mr. Hale.
Margot took one of the round ones herself. She had eaten so many chocolates already that it was necessary to crunch it quickly in order to get the flavour. She crunched it, and Mr. Hale waited disapprovingly until she had finished. He wished to offer her his condolences upon her father’s death, and it appeared to him in the highest degree unseemly that he should do so whilst she was eating chocolates.
As she immediately replaced the chocolate by another, he abandoned the condolences altogether and plunged into business.
“I have come, Miss Standing, to ask you if you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of Mr. Standing’s will.”
Margot shook her head.
“Why, how on earth should I?”
“I don’t know. Your father might have spoken to you on the subject.”
“But I haven’t seen him for three years.”
“So long as that?”
Miss Standing nodded.
“He was very seldom here for the holidays, anyhow, and the last three years he was always in America, or Germany, or Italy, or some of those places.”
“Not Switzerland? You were at school in Switzerland, I believe.”
“Never Switzerland,” declared Miss Standing taking another chocolate.
“Did he ever write to you about his will?”
Margot’s eyes opened to their fullest extent.
“Good gracious no! Why, he practically never wrote to me at all.”
“That,” said Mr. Hale, “is unfortunate. You see, Miss Standing, we are in a difficulty. Your father’s affairs have been in our hands for the last fifteen years. But it was my father who had full knowledge of them. I know that he and the late Mr. Standing were upon terms of considerable intimacy; and if my father was still with us, the whole matter would probably be cleared up in a few minutes.”
“Isn’t your father with you?”
Mr. Hale cleared his throat and fingered a black tie.
“My father died a month ago.”
“Oh,” said Miss Standing. Then she paused, leaned forward with a sudden graceful change of attitude, and said, “Nobody’s told me anything about Papa. M’amselle said she didn’t know-only what was in the telegram, you know. You sent it, didn’t you? And so I don’t really know anything at all.”
“Mr. Standing died very suddenly,” said Mr. Hale. “He was in his yacht off Majorca.”
Margot repeated the name.
“Where is Majorca?”
Mr. Hale informed her. He also put her in possession of what he termed “the sad particulars” of her father’s death. It appeared that the yacht had been caught in a heavy gale, and that Mr. Standing, who refused to leave the deck, had been washed overboard.
Mr. Hale at this point offered his belated condolences, after which he cleared his throat and added:
“Unfortunately we are quite unable to trace any will, or to obtain any evidence that would lead us to suppose that he had ever made one.”
“Does it matter?” asked Margot indifferently.
Mr. Hale frowned. “It matters a good deal to you, Miss Standing.”