Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/115

 moment. Death had been instantaneous. He was still smiling, still clutching the ticker-tape when they picked him up.

His death had occurred move than a week before. He had already been buried. It was too late for Madame to attend the funeral.

But the letter had much in it beside that. Templeton had left a daughter, Dorothy, now about nineteen years old. Her mother was dead and Louella was her only living relative. Templeton had left his entire estate to be shared equally between his sister, Mary; and his daughter, Dorothy. He had appointed Mary executrix without bond and had requested that she come and live at his home on Fifth Avenue, New York, opposite the Park. He wished her to be Dorothy's companion and guardian. The lawyer further stated that he understood that the estate would run into millions.

Madame Leota dropped the letter. "Well I'm damned," she said.

"Not eternally, I hope," said Terese lightly.

"Unfortunately I believe it will be eternally," she muttered. "Terese, read this letter and tell me what I am to do."

Terese read it It was some moments before she spoke, then she said: "Wilt you take me with you when you go?"

"Who said I was going?" demanded Madame.

"I know you will," replied Terese meekly. "As long as that young girl is alone in die world, you'll go to her."

"Why I'm not fit to have anything to do with a decent girl." "Pardon me if I disagree."

"You mean I am fit?"

"Certainly. You're real. Genuine. There's nothing false about you. You've been a mother to the girls who have worked for you. You know life. Somehow you remind me of the pictures by Paul Gauguin which Mr. Alter talks about so much. They're elemental. You can't call them moral or immoral. They are colorful. They are great."

Madame did not answer the letter for two days and during those two days she denied herself to everyone except Ivan Alter.

"You took me to the Black Hills," she said, "but the life I have led has cast me at last into a Black Hell."