Callous or not, she couldn't help hoping, like Judy, that the murdered Italian might prove to be Connie's entirely superfluous husband. No other man, she felt, could so thoroughly deserve to die such a death, if half the things Connie had told of him were true. And Connie was not an untruthful woman. He was too evil to live . . . too evil to die, perhaps, but his fate in the next world concerned her less than his activities in this.
Then one more letter from Stephen—the last, he said, from Cannes. "D.V.," murmured Madame Claire as she read the words.
"You don't know what you did for me when you lent me Judy," he wrote. "She has grown very dear to me, and I have persuaded her, I think, to let me settle something on her. As I pointed out to her, if you had married me, as she often says you ought to have done, she would have been, to all practical purposes, my granddaughter. My wants are simple, and I have only my niece Monica and Miss McPherson to think of, and they are already arranged for. Judy has given me an added interest in life, and as I tell her, I feel I'm buying shares in the coming generation. I have every faith in the company and mean to be godfather to all the dividends. You
