"Imagine that d----d pietistic rascal dragging the miserable shrimp up here to apologise to George!"
He was ashamed, not merely of his relatives, but somehow of all humanity. He could scarcely look even a chair in the face. The Benbows had left behind them desolation, and this desolation affected everything, and could be tasted on the tongue. Janet of course instantly noticed it, and felt that she ought not to witness the shaming of her friends. Moreover, her existence now was chiefly an apology for itself.
"I really think I ought to go back and see about a meal for Johnnie in case he turns up."
"Nonsense!" said Hilda, sharply. "With three servants in the house, I suppose Johnnie won’t starve! Now just sit down. Sit _down_!" Her tone softened. "My dear, you’re worse than a child.... Tell Edwin." She put a cushion behind Janet in the easy chair. And the gesture made Janet’s eyes humid once more.
Edwin had the exciting, disquieting, vitalising sensation of being shut up in an atmosphere of women. Not two women, but two thousand, seemed to hem him in with their incalculable impulses, standards, inspirations.
"Janet wants to consult you," Hilda added; and even Hilda appeared to regard him as a strong saviour.
"After all, then, I’m not the born idiot she’d like to make out. Now we’re getting at her real opinion of me!"
"It’s only about father’s estate," said Janet.
"Oh yes! He made a will over thirty years ago. He left everything to mother and made her sole executor or whatever you call it. Just like him, wasn’t it? ... D’you know that he and mother never had a quarrel, nor anything near a quarrel?"
"Well," Edwin, nodding appreciatively, answered with an informed masculine air. "The law provides for all that. Tom will know. Did your mother make a will?"
"No. Dear thing! She would never have dreamt of it."
"Then letters of administration will have to be taken out," said Edwin.
"Father was talking of making a new will two or three months ago. He mentioned it to Tom. He said he should like you to be one of the executors. He said he would sooner have you for an executor than anybody."
An intense satisfaction permeated Edwin, that he should have been desired as an executor by such an important man as Osmond Orgreave. He felt as though he were receiving compensation for uncounted detractions.