Over there in Cambridge in the noble world of abstractions it had been moving for a moment; she had even wept. Here she saw it for what it was. “People don’t crack up because they feel part of the world—that’s just nonsense,” she said, going through the revolving door in a swirl of self-assertion.

She was going to the sixteenth floor, an appropriate height from which to look down on the tragic facts, on which to examine Edward’s final wishes. She had no idea how much of the money he had inherited was still available; she suspected that Edward had given most of it away long ago. But of course it would be very pleasant if there were a legacy.…

“Come in, Mrs. Ferrier.” Mr. Wainwright was a small nervous man, very brisk and neat, wearing, Isabel noted a pink shirt and black tie with a gray flannel suit, which didn’t go at all with his rather wizened kindly face and made him look rather like a monkey. There was someone else there, an elderly tight-lipped man who introduced himself as Mr. Rand and who came, she did not understand why, apparently from Iowa.

Mr. Wainwright offered her a cigarette from the silver box on his immaculate desk and apologized for bringing her here on the day of the funeral, “but I understand that you are anxious to catch a plane tomorrow.”

“Yes, what do I have to do, Mr. Wainwright? Sign something?”

He leaned forward, to pull out a folder containing some papers which he opened on the desk. Then he took out a pair of old-fashioned steel-rimmed spectacles, put them on his nose and looked up over them at her with a faintly troubled air. All this was done methodically, slowly, and as if he was preparing a speech and did not know quite where to begin.

“The estate is some fifty thousand dollars, mostly in property, Mrs. Ferrier”—he peered at her kindly and interrupted himself. “Your brother was a very generous man,” he said with a smile.

“I know that,” she said quietly. She was calculating rapidly that he must have given away roughly a hundred thousand.

“Unfortunately, the will is not altogether clear. I believe we shall have to ask the Courts to appoint an administrator. You see, I’m afraid your brother was in a rather troubled mind and did not realize that there might be legal difficulties. As a matter of fact, there are two wills, one very much written over and the second one, which we take to be the real one, witnessed two years after it was made. This presents certain problems.”

“I don’t understand anything about all this. I leave it all to you, Mr. Wainwright. But may I ask just what is involved?”

“The main bequest is to Cornell College.” Mr. Wainwright made something like a bow in Mr. Rand’s direction. “Roughly thirty-five thousand dollars.”