Chapter 45

Contrary to his wife’s expectations, Mr. Baldwin did not die for a long time, but when at last he did, on that same day Lydia Baldwin left the house forever, and within the week after her father’s funeral was married to Henry Holborn before a justice of the peace. It was on the afternoon of Lydia’s marriage that the Widow Baldwin appeared at the offices of Tutt & Tutt and asked for the senior partner. He received her in silence, standing. “Well,” she greeted him, looking more vulturelike than ever in her weeds,…