Jane left the restaurant immediately after her luncheon in order to get some fresh air before her interview with the solicitor. When she had left Brighton at midday, the weather had been fine, but just now as she approached the pier, it began to rain and she wished she had brought an umbrella. There were not many people as it was early summer, so she was able to find somewhere to sit down in one of the shelters that face the sea. She took a timetable from her bag and checked to see whether there was a train which would get her back to Victoria by seven. She was going to Covent Garden that evening with her fiance and her mother.
Her appointment was for three o"clock. This meant that she had an hour to herself, an hour to spend in unfamiliar surroundings. She did not want to stare aimlessly at the sea, so she was glad when the weather changed and the sun shone. She discovered that when she had walked a few hundred yards inland she was quite near the famous Regency Pavilion. She bought a ticket from the attendant and was so excited that she almost forgot her interview.
The interview, however, turned out to be even more exciting than the visit to the Pavilion. Although the solicitor"s dingy office, with its drab, worn-out leather armchairs and musty smell of old papers, didn"t compare with the freshness of the newly-decorated Pavilion, its memory, she thought, would never vanish from her mind. As she sipped a cup of tea in the dining car on her return journey to London, she recalled the solicitor"s words after he had finished reading out the relevant extracts from her aunt"s will and testament.
"You lucky girl. It is not many people who are left $50,000 and a house in the country." How pleasant to be able to repeat these words to her fiance that evening, she thought. Where was Jane at the beginning of the story