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"What do you suggest?" Helena demanded evenly. "You're his—his widow's attorney now, and you have a duty to me, too."

"Well . . . My idea is that you should take over the store. Then if you find it—ah—inconvenient under the circumstances, you sell it for a comfortable sum. Possibly to Roger Barnes."

"I know what you mean by 'inconvenient,'" said Helena slowly. "They'll all hate me."

Courtney looked grim. "They'll regard you as an interloper for a time, possibly. I wouldn't mislead you there. And Roger Barnes may be an active enemy."

"And Leah Frazier?"

Courtney shook his head. "I can't answer that."

But Helena could answer it. Her sure, woman's instinct told her that Leah Frazier would be a far more active enemy than Roger Barnes, whatever the latter might be like.

The attorney looked at his watch. "The caretaker has offered to take us to the station to catch the afternoon train. I'll see to . . . all the arrangements, and the services, of course, will be over there. You'll come with us."

Helena nodded. "Of course I'll want to—to be at the funeral. Then I'll decide about the—the other."

Courtney left the room briskly, and a few moments later Helena sought Sandra. Briefly, through a fresh flood of tears, she told Sandra Leigh what Peter had done.

"But I can't go through with it, don't you see? I-I don't belong in Peter's life or in his town or in his business. I-I haven't the right."

The Leigh girl sat squarely in front of her, lifted Helena's chin until their eyes met. "Look here, child, I'm glad you came to me with this. I-I rather feel I got you into it, and I want the chance to see you through it. Answer a question for me. Who has a better right to it than you?"

"Peter's uncle. Perhaps this Leah Frazier."

"Nonsense! I don't know Peter's uncle, but there must have been some good reason why he was left out altogether. As for Leah Frazier, feel sorry for her if you want. But I'll tell you this, you'd better feel sorrier for yourself. She has that town by the tail, and she'll swing it against you every chance she gets. I think I know women, Helena. She's the kind that doesn't fall for a man, toss over everything for him. She had herself set for Peter, and she was going to get him. It never mattered whether she loved him, or whether he loved her."

"But I—"

"Let me finish, Helena. You thought you were in love with Peter. I think you were, but whether it was love or just an infatuation that swept you off your feet doesn't matter now. You were willing to take the chance, and you took it. You couldn't know this was going to happen. And don't think you're being handed something free. Life doesn't work out that way. If you make a go of it in Peter's home town with what he left you, then you'll fight like hell for it and win it on your own."

There was a knock at the door, and at Sandra's invitation it opened and revealed a tall, cool blond.

"Miss Frazier . . ." Sandra said clearly, "this is Mrs. Henderson."

Leah Frazier's gaze was sharp, penetrating, and under it Helena felt her face growing crimson.

"How do you do?" said Leah, immediately ignoring Helena. She turned to Sandra. "I was wondering about the plane schedule to the city. I'm rather upset and I don't think I'll return home for a few days."

While Leah stood there facing Sandra, Helena examined her. She was indeed beautiful. Her features, her figure were perfect, almost as though she had been done in marble by some sculptor—but a sculptor who had somehow been unable to breathe softness into his work. Her poise was a mosaic, nicely fitted together, a pattern from smart schools, from Cannes, from Paris, from Florida and Palm Springs. For a moment Helena felt strangely afraid. This, then, was the woman who would have been Peter Henderson's wife. "Sandra was right," Helena thought. "She didn't love Peter. She couldn't love anyone. She's not even going to his funeral."

A troublesome voice somewhere in her brain kept asking, "Did you love Peter? How do you know? How do you know it wasn't the new environment, the gaiety of Sandra's crowd—Peter making love to you in the moonlight—how do you know it wasn't that?"

In a sudden flash of self-revelation she saw that what she was feeling for Peter's death was not so much grief as shock. Grief was something that welled up out of the years, out of an association between two people through happiness and sorrow, through success and defeat.

But her brain was too weary to follow things out. Her life seemed to have been taken into other hands. John Courtney seemed to symbolize a fate that was steering her along in the rut of the law.

Before she could be certain of anything at all, she was on the train with him, bound for Peter's town . . . the owner of the Henderson Department store and the big Henderson home she had never seen.

(To be continued)