"Olwen, you ought to be in bed, you look half crazy, child; let me take your temperature!"
The heiress flew upon undemonstrative Aunt Ada, locking her vigorous young arms about her. "Take anything you like!" she cried, "for I owe you everything I have or am! Oh, Aunt Maud, Aunt Maud! Do you remember how we played at fancying we were rich, chose our house in Gainsley Park, furnished it with our favourite things out of the best shops, chose our Daimler or our Rolls-Royce, and went off together for a tour in Italy? Well, we’ll do it! We’ll do it all! We’ll do more than ever our poor little starved imaginations dared to think of! You shall do just exactly as you like, my dears, from this moment for the rest of your lives!"
"Is she crazy? In a high fever," cried Aunt Maud apprehensively, lifting the burnished locks to gaze anxiously upon the wound beneath.
The vicar got to his feet. He trembled, as his gnarled hands rested upon the sheet of soiled blotting-paper on his desk.
"It’s true, my dears, she is not crazy. Madoc Innes is dead and has left her more money than she will know what to do with."
Olwen Innes stood in the hall of her house in Chelsea, bidding good-bye to her guests. It was a charming hall, for the wall of a room had been removed to make space for it, and the result was excellent, creating an effect quite unlike a London house.
Though years had elapsed since she acquired No. 2 Orchard Row, this was her house-warming; and the guests who were departing were all of them friends in more than name, since they had become acquainted under stress of the most terrible period of modern history.
Hardly had Olwen decided where she would make her home, hardly had the decorators completed their dainty work upon it, when the European War broke out. No furniture was as yet in the house, and Olwen and Aunt Maud promptly turned it into a hospital for wounded officers.
The expenses of its working were borne entirely by the mistress of the house, and Aunt Maud personally superintended all the catering. During the grim summers and winters when the fortunes of the Allies ebbed and flowed, the new heiress worked as hard as ever she had done in the Palatine Bank, with short and very occasional holidays.