“You must have been getting anxious about the will.  I have brought it with me,” he said.  He drew a white document from the breast-pocket of his cutaway coat, and he perched a pair of eyeglasses carelessly on his nose.  “It was executed before your birth, Miss Moze.  But a will keeps like wine.  The whole of the property of every description is left to Mrs. Moze, and she is sole executrix.  If she should predecease the testator, then everything is left to his child or children.  Not perhaps a very businesslike will—­a will likely to lead to unforeseen complications, but the sort of will that a man in the first flush of marriage often does make, and there is no stopping him.  Your father had almost every quality, but he was not businesslike—­if I may say so with respect.  However, I confess that for the present I see no difficulties.  Of course the death duties will have to be paid, but your father always kept a considerable amount of money at call.  When I say ‘considerable,’ I mean several thousands.  That was a point on which he and I had many discussions.”

Mr. Foulger glanced around with satisfaction.  Already the prospect of legal business and costs had brought about a change in his official demeanour of an adviser truly bereaved by the death of a client.  He saw the young girl, gazing fiercely at the carpet, suddenly begin to weep.  This phenomenon, to which he was not unaccustomed, did not by itself disturb him; but the face of Miss Ingate gave him strange apprehensions, which reached a climax when Miss Ingate, obviously not at all at ease, muttered: 

“There is a later will, Mr. Foulger.  It was made last year.”

“I see,” he breathed, scarcely above a whisper.

He thought he did see.  He thought he understood why he had been kept waiting, why Mrs. Moze pretended to be ill, why the girl had frowned, why the naively calm Miss Ingate was in such a state of nerves.  The explanation was that he was not wanted.  The explanation was that Mr. Moze had changed his solicitor.  His face hardened, for he and his uncle between them had “acted” for the Moze family for over seventy years.

He rose from the chair.

“Then I need not trouble you any longer,” he said in a firm tone, and turned with real dignity to leave.

He was exceedingly astonished when with one swift movement Audrey rose, and flashed like a missile to the door, and stood with her back to it.  The fact was that Audrey had just remembered her vow never again to be afraid of anybody.  When Miss Ingate with extraordinary agility also jumped up and approached him, he apprehended, recalling rumours of Miss Ingate’s advanced feminism, that the fate of an anti-suffragette Cabinet Minister might be awaiting him, and he prepared his defence.

“You mustn’t go,” said Miss Ingate.

“You are my solicitor, whatever mother may say, and you mustn’t go,” added Audrey in a soft voice.

The man was entranced.  It occurred to him that he would have a tale to tell and to re-tell at his club for years, about “a certain fair client who shall be nameless.”