"Wills are not scribbled off on deathbeds; or if they are, it needs something more than a signature to legalize them. I don't believe in this trick of a later will. Mr. Cavanagh"--here he indicated the gentleman accompanying them--"has done my father's business for years, and he assured me that the paper he holds in his pocket is the first, last, and only expression of your brother's wishes. If you are in a position to deny this, show us the document you mention; show us it at once, or inform us where and in whose hands it can be found.""That, for--for reasons I cannot give, I must refuse to do at present. But I am ready to swear--"A mocking laugh cut her short. Did it issue from his lips or from those of his highstrung and unfeeling wife? It might have come from either; there was cause enough.
"Oh!" she faltered, "may God have mercy!" and was sinking before their eyes, when she heard her name, called from the threshold, and, looking that way, saw Hetty beaming upon her, backed by a little figure with a face so radiant that instinctively her hand went out to grasp the folded sheet of paper Hetty was seeking to thrust upon her.
"Ah!" she cried, in a great voice, "you will not have to wait, nor Clement either. Here is the will! The children have come into their own." And she fell at their feet in a dead faint.
"Where did you find it? Oh! where did you find it? I have waited a week to know. When, after Carlos's sudden departure, I stood beside Clement's death-bed and saw from the look he gave me that he could still feel and understand, I told him that you had succeeded in your task and that all was well with us. But I was not able to tell him how you had succeeded or in what place the will had been found; and he died, unknowing. But we may know, may we not, now that he is laid away and there is no more talk of our leaving this house?"Violet smiled, but very tenderly, and in a way not to offend the mourner. They were sitting in the library--the great library which was to remain in Clement's family after all--and it amused her to follow the dreaming lady's glances as they ran in irrepressible curiosity over the walls. Had Violet wished, she could have kept her secret forever. These eyes would never have discovered it.
But she was of a sympathetic temperament, our Violet, so after a moment's delay, during which she satisfied herself that little, if anything, had been touched in the room since her departure from it a week before, she quietly observed:
"You were right in persisting that you hid it in this room. It was here I found it. Do you notice that photograph on the mantel which does not stand exactly straight on its easel?""Yes."
"Supposing you take it down. You can reach it, can you not?""Oh, yes. But what--"
"Lift it down, dear Mrs. Quintard; and then turn it round and look at its back."Agitated and questioning, the lady did as she was bid, and at the first glance gave a cry of surprise, if not of understanding. The square of brown paper, acting as a backing to the picture, was slit across, disclosing a similar one behind it which was still intact.
"Oh! was it hidden in here?" she asked.
"Very completely," assented Violet. "Pasted in out of sight by a lady who amuses herself with mounting and framing photographs.
Usually, she is conscious of her work, but this time she performed her task in a dream."Mrs. Quintard was all amazement.
"I don't remember touching these pictures," she declared. "Inever should have remembered. You are a wonderful person, Miss Strange. How came you to think these photographs might have two backings? There was nothing to show that this was so.""I will tell you, Mrs. Quintard. You helped me.""I helped you?"
"Yes. You remember the memorandum you gave me? In it you mentioned pasting photographs. But this was not enough in itself to lead me to examine those on the mantel, if you had not given me another suggestion a little while before. We did not tell you this, Mrs. Quintard, at the time, but during the search we were ****** here that day, you had a lapse into that peculiar state which induces you to walk in your sleep. It was a short one, lasting but a moment, but in a moment one can speak, and, this you did--""Spoke? I spoke?"
"Yes, you uttered the word 'paper!' not the paper, but 'paper!' and reached out towards the shears. Though I had not much time to think of it then, afterwards upon reading your memorandum Irecalled your words, and asked myself if it was not paper to cut, rather than to hide, you wanted. If it was to cut, and you were but repeating the experience of the night before, then the room should contain some remnants of cut paper. Had we seen any? Yes, in the basket, under the desk we had taken out and thrown back again a strip or so of wrapping paper, which, if my memory did not fail me, showed a clean-cut edge. To pull this strip out again and spread it flat upon the desk was the work of a minute, and what I saw led me to look all over the room, not now for the folded document, but for a square of brown paper, such as had been taken out of this larger sheet. Was I successful? Not for a long while, but when I came to the photographs on the mantel and saw how nearly they corresponded in shape and size to what I was looking for, I recalled again your fancy for mounting photographs and felt that the mystery was solved.
"A glance at the back of one of them brought disappointment, but when I turned about its mate-- You know what I found underneath the outer paper. You had laid the will against the original backing and simply pasted another one over it.
"That the discovery came in time to cut short a very painful interview has made me joyful for a week.
"And now may I see the children?"
