Anne Hereford. Mrs. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ with his black glove as I was essaying to quit the room. "The will concerns you. I asked your wife if I should take possession of it, but she preferred to keep it herself."

      "I do not know where it can have been put, then," returned Mr. Edwin Barley, while his brother lifted his head in interest. "I have examined her desk and one or two of her drawers where she kept papers; but I have found no will."

      "Perhaps you did not look particularly for a will, not knowing she had made one, and so it may have escaped your notice, sir," suggested the lawyer.

      "Pardon me; it was the precise thing I looked for. I heard of your visit to my wife: not, however, until after her death; and it struck me that your coming might have reference to something of the sort. But I found no will; only a few pencilled words on a half-sheet of paper in her desk. Do you know where it was put?"

      The lawyer turned to me. "Perhaps this little lady may know," he said. "She made one in the room when I was with Mrs. Edwin Barley, and may have seen afterwards where the will was placed."

      Again I felt sick with apprehension: few children at my age have ever been so shy and sensitive. It seemed to me that all was coming out; at any rate, my share in it. But I spoke pretty bravely.

      "You mean the paper that you left on my Aunt Selina's bed, sir? I put it in the cabinet; she directed me to do so."

      "In the cabinet?" repeated Mr. Edwin Barley to me.

      "Yes, sir. Just inside as you open it."

      "Will you go with me to search for it?" said Mr. Edwin Barley to the lawyer. "And you can go into Miss Delves's parlour, Anne; little girls are better out of these affairs."

      "Pardon me," dissented Mr. Gregg. "Miss Hereford, as the only interested party, had better remain. And if she can show us where the will is, it will save time."

      Mr. Edwin Barley looked as if he meant to object, but did not. "The child's nerves have been unhinged," he said to the lawyer as they went upstairs, I and Mr. Barley following.

      The key of the cabinet lay in the corner of the drawer where I had placed it. Mr. Edwin Barley took it from me and opened the cabinet. But no will was to be seen.

      "I did not think of looking here," he observed; "my wife never used the cabinet to my knowledge. There is no will here."

      There was no will anywhere, apparently. Drawers were opened; her desk, standing now on the drawers, was searched; all without effect.

      "It is very extraordinary," said Mr. Gregg to him.

      "I can only come to one conclusion--that my wife must have destroyed it herself. It is true the keys were lying about for several hours subsequent to her death, at anybody's command; but who would steal a will?"

      "I do not suppose Mrs. Edwin Barley would destroy it," dissented Mr. Gregg. "Nothing can be more improbable. She expressed her happiness at having been able to make a will; her great satisfaction. Who left the keys about, sir?"

      "The blame of that lies with Charlotte Delves. It escaped her memory to secure them, she tells me: and in the confusion of the sudden blow, it is not to be wondered at. But, and if the keys were left about? I have honest people in my house, Mr. Gregg."

      "Who benefited by the will?" asked Mr. Barley of the Oaks, he having helped in the search, and was now looking on with a face of puzzled concern. "Who comes into the money, Gregg?"

      "Ay, who?" put in Mr. Edwin Barley.

      "This little girl, Anne Ursula Hereford. Mrs. Edwin Barley bequeathed to her the whole of her money, and also her trinkets, except the trinkets that had been your own gift to her, Mr. Edwin Barley." And he proceeded to detail the provisions of the short will. "In fact, she left to Miss Hereford everything of value she had to leave; money, clothes, trinkets. It is most strange where the will can be."

      "It is more than strange," observed Mr. Edwin Barley. "Why did she wish to make the will in secret?"

      "I have told you, sir, that she did not say why."

      "But can you not form an idea why?"

      "It occurred to me that she thought you might not like her leaving all she had away from you, and might have feared you would interfere."

      "No," he quietly said, "I should not have done that. Every wish that she confided to me should have been scrupulously carried out."

      "Oh, but come, you know! a big sheet of parchment, sealed and inscribed, can't vanish in this way," exclaimed Mr. Barley. "It must be somewhere in the room."

      It might be, but nobody could find it. Mr. Barley got quite excited and angry: Mr. Edwin was calm throughout. Mr. Barley went to the door, calling out for Miss Delves.

      "Charlotte, come up here. Do you hear, Charlotte?"

      She ran up quickly, evidently wondering.

      "Look here," cried Mr. Barley, "Mrs. Edwin's will can't be found. It was left in this cabinet, my brother is told."

      "Oh, then Mrs. Edwin did make a will?" was the response of Charlotte Delves.

      "Yes; but it is gone," repeated Mr. Barley of the Oaks.

      "It cannot be gone," said Charlotte. "If the will was left in the cabinet, there it would be now."

      The old story was gone over again; nothing more. The will had been made, and as certainly placed there. The servants were honest, not capable of meddling with that or anything else. But there was no sign or symptom of a will left.

      "It is very strange," exclaimed Mr. Edwin Barley, looking furtively from the corner of his black eyes at most of us in succession, as if we were in league against him or against the will. "I will have the house searched throughout."

      The search took place that same evening. Himself, his brother, Mr. Gregg, and Charlotte Delves taking part in it. Entirely without success.

      And in my busy heart there was running a conviction all the while, that Mr. Edwin Barley had himself made away with the will.

      "Will you not act in accordance with its provisions, sir?" Mr. Gregg asked him as he was leaving.

      "I do not think I shall," said Mr. Edwin Barley. "Produce the will, and every behest in it shall be fulfilled. Failing a will, my wife's property becomes mine, and I shall act as I please by it."

      The days went by; ten unhappy days. I spent most of my time with Miss Delves, seeing scarcely anything of Mr. Edwin Barley. Part of the time he was staying at his brother's, but now and then I met him in the passages or the hall. He would give me a nod, and pass by. I cannot describe my state of feeling, or how miserable the house appeared to me: I was as one unsettled in it, as one who lived in constant discomfort, fear, and dread; though, of what, I could not define. Jemima remarked one day that "Miss Hereford went about moithered, like a fish out of water."

      The will did not turn up, and probably never would: neither was any clue given to the mystery of its disappearance. Meanwhile rumours of its loss grew rife in the household and in the neighbourhood: whether the lawyer talked, or Mr. Barley of the Oaks, and thus set them afloat, was uncertain, but it was thought to have been one or the other. I know I had said СКАЧАТЬ