Page:Pierre and Jean - Clara Bell - 1902.djvu/138

Rh She opened those covetous blue eyes of hers very wide.

"Oh! and who left him that? His grandmother or his aunt?"

"No. An old friend of my parents'."

"Only a friend! Impossible! And you—did he leave you nothing?"

"No. I knew him very slightly."

She sat thinking some minutes; then, with an odd smile on her lips, she said:

"Well, he is a lucky dog, that brother of yours, to have friends of this pattern. My word! and no wonder he is so unlike you."

He longed to slap her, without knowing why; and he asked with pinched lips: "And what do you mean by saying that?"

She had put on a stolid, innocent face.

"O—h, nothing. I mean he has better luck than you."

He tossed a franc piece on the table and went out.

Now he kept repeating the phrase: "No wonder he is so unlike you."

What had her thought been, what had been her meaning under those words? There was certainly some malice, some spite, something shameful in it. Yes, that hussy must have fancied, no