Only One Love; or, Who Was the Heir. Charles Garvice

have been any meaning and significance in it, my clerk and I will make a careful search to-morrow.”

      “Yes,” murmured Stephen, “and I devoutly trust that should a later will be in existence, you may find it.”

      “I hope we may,” said Mr. Hudsley. “Good-night!”

      Stephen accompanied him to the door as he had accompanied the doctor and Jack, and saw him into the brougham, and then turned back into the house with a look of release, which, however, gradually changed to one of lurking fear and indefinite dread.

      “Conscience makes cowards of us all.”

      It makes a worse coward of Stephen Davenant than he was naturally.

      As he stood in the deserted hall, and looked round, at its vast dimness, at the carved gallery and staircase, somber and dull for want of varnish, and listened to the faint, ghostly noises made by the awe-stricken servants moving to and fro overhead, a chill crept over him, and he wished that he had kept one of them, even Jack, to bear him company.

      With fearful gaze he peered into the darkness, scarcely daring to cross the hall and enter the library. For all the stillness, he fancied he could hear that last shriek of the dying man ringing through the house; for all the darkness, the slim, bent figure seemed to be moving to and fro, the dark piercing eyes turned upon him with furious accusation. Even when he had summoned up courage to enter the library, locking the door after him, the eyes seemed to follow him, and with a shudder that shook him from head to foot he poured out a glass of brandy and drank it down.

      The Spirit of Evil certainly invented brandy for cowards.

      Stephen set down the empty glass and looked round the room—another man.

      He even smiled in a ghostly kind of fashion as he took the will from his pocket and opened it.

      “Poor Jack!” he murmured, with a sardonic display of the white teeth. “This no doubt makes you master of Hurst Leigh; but Providence has decreed that the spendthrift shall be disappointed. Yes, I am the humble instrument chosen. I am——”

      He stopped suddenly with a start, for he had been reading as he soliloquized, and he had come upon words that struck him to the very heart’s core.

      Was he dreaming, or had his senses taken leave of him?

      With beating heart and white, parched lips he stared at the paper until the lines of crabbed handwriting danced before his astounded eyes.

      If brevity is the soul of wit, old Ralph Davenant’s will was wit itself. It consisted of five paragraphs.

      The first was merely the usual preamble declaring the testator to be of sound mind.

      The second ran thus:

      “To John Newcombe I will and bequeath the sum of fifty thousand pounds, the said sum to be realized by the sale or transfer of bonds and stocks, at the discretion of James Hudsley.”

      Enough in this to move Stephen, but it paled into insignificance before what followed:

      “To my nephew, Stephen Davenant, I will and bequeath the set of Black’s sermons in twenty-nine volumes, standing on the second shelf in the library, having remarked the affection which the said Stephen Davenant bore the said volumes, and accepting his repeated assertions that his attendance upon me was wholly disinterested.”

      An ugly flash and an evil glitter swept over Stephen’s white face and eyes, and his teeth ground together maliciously.

      “To each and every one of my servants I bequeath the sum of one hundred pounds, such sum to be forfeited by each and every one who assumes mourning for my death, which each and every one has anxiously looked forward to.

      “And lastly, I will and bequeath the remainder of my property of whatsoever kind, be it money, houses, lands, or property of any description, to my only daughter and child, Eunice Davenant, the same to be held in trust for her sole use and benefit by James Hudsley.

      “And I hereby inform him, and the world at large, that the said Eunice Davenant is the only issue of my marriage with Caroline Hatfield; that the said marriage was celebrated in secret at the Church of Armfield, in Sussex, in June, 18—. And that the said Eunice Davenant, my daughter, is in the keeping of one Gideon Rolfe, woodman, of Warden Forest, who has reared her as his own child, and who is unacquainted with the facts of my secret marriage, and I decree and appoint James Hudsley sole guardian, trustee, and ward of the aforesaid Eunice Davenant, and at her hands I crave forgiveness for my neglect of her mother and herself.