Dear Trustee Read Online Free

instance.”
    “I wasn’t a friend of the defendant!” Cecile declared hastily.
    “No, no. You came to hear me, naturally. Wanted to inspect your new trustee at close quarters. Quite understandable.”
    “I didn’t even know you were my trustee then,” Cecile retorted crisply, pleased to show Mr. Gregory Picton he could be wrong.
    “You didn’t?” He seemed amused and interested. “Well, anyway, what did you think of the case?”
    She looked at that handsome, imperturbable face, with its faintly amused smile, and some resentful instinct she could not have accounted for made her say, quite deliberately,
    “I thought you were horrible.”
    "You did?” He laughed. While Mr. Carisbrooke uttered the sound which is usually indicated by, “Tch, tch!”
    “It seems the defendant did have a friend in the public gallery, after all,” observed Mr. Picton amusedly. “And that friend no less than my own new charge. Did you think there was a miscarriage of justice, then, Cecile?”
    “I—No, I don’t think that,” she admitted.
    “You feel morally certain the libel was false and malicious?”
    “Ye-es.”
    “But you think I was horrible—” he savoured the word with an amused appreciation which secretly infuriated her—“to make the libeller give himself away? You would have prefer r ed kindness and good manners to have been maintained, even at the expense of justice?”
    “No, of course not.” She flushed again, at being pushed into a corner thus. “But since you insisted on asking me and quite obviously expected a compliment, I felt entitled to tell you that your methods were odious.”
    “But effective?”
    “Well—yes.” She was fair about that.
    “Perhaps,” Mr. Carisbrooke cleared his throat, “since Mr. Picton’s time is short, we should revert to more personal matters.”
    Privately, Cecile thought they could hardly have been more personal. But Gregory Picton immediately sat down—a little as though the place belonged to him, Cecile reflected resentfully—and, glancing at Mr. Carisbrooke, asked:
    “Has Cecile been told of the situation?”
    “I know about my mother,” Cecile interrupted quickly, and she looked her trustee in the eye with what s he hoped was self-confidence. “And I intend to see her as soon as possible.”
    “You have seen her, my dear,” was the unexpected reply. “In the play last night. She was the slightly raffish friend of the heroine’s mother. In Act Two.”
    “The—the tall woman in green?” Cecile went pale.
    “Yes. You didn’t notice a marked likeness to yourself?”
    “Why, no. Is there one?”
    “Yes, certainly. That was how I guessed who you were when I saw you sitting in the row behind me. I thought you had found out about your mother somehow, and had come on purpose to see her.”
    “Oh, no. Not at all.” Agitatedly Cecile tried to recall everything about the minor stage character who now had such personal interest for her, and rather defensively she exclaimed, “I thought she was wonderful in the part.”
    “It was right up her street,” agreed Mr. Picton drily.
    And, while Cecile was wondering just what he meant by that, Mr. Carisbrooke went on firmly:
    “I have explained to Miss Bernardine the position with regard to you and your co-trustees. I have not, however, explained the—er—financial position.”
    “Is there much to explain?” Cecile looked enquiring.
    Mr. Carisbrooke did not reply at once. And, after a moment, it was Gregory Picton who said, not unkindly,
    “In the literal sense, Cecile, there is not much to discuss. Although your father was a wealthy man when he made his will and appointed the trustees, in the last year or two he used a great deal of capital in order to make some unlucky investments.”
    “Then you mean there is nothing much for the trustees to administer?” Cecile seized on that eagerly.
    “Not much,” he agreed.
    “So that you haven’t got much hold—I mean control—over me?”
    “I don’t know