took away from me, John and Oliver—damn weaklings—and that damn wife of Oliver's who couldn't even die decently but had to be drowned so as to throw everything into court. But it'll come to me, I tell you; and I'll be alive to get it!"
He jerked about and strode across the room, stumbling over the edge of the heavy rug; he caught himself, with a violent ejaculation, and flung back the rug with his foot. Ethel stayed by the fire, watching him. She saw that his outburst had gone further than he meant it to, that he had betrayed more to her than he had intended; and she stood, breathing hard in the first throes of examination of him.
She was beginning to realize that up to this day her questions about her grandfather and her father's relations with him and with the others of the family had been merely curious. What was, was; and she had accepted it without embarking upon any real effort for understanding. She had said to herself, as she had repeated often to others, that her grandfather "liked to live" at St. Florentin. She had never thought about him coming here in order to be sure to live and to outlive his brother and his brother's son. There was something about that which shot a strange, unwelcome sensation through her,—her grandfather stalking through the woods gloating that he was living while his brother, down in the city, was dying, and his brother's son a "weakling" and also likely to die so that everything should come to him. And now that she was ceasing to accept what was, she knew that the reason just betrayed was not sufficient to account for St. Florentin; some cause which cut far deeper had been operating and was beginning to affect her.
