Hand and Ring

by Anna Katharine Green

"What can you tell us of his nature and disposition, as well as of his regard for the woman who proposed to benefit him so materially by her will?"

"Well, sir," returned Miss Firman, "it is hard to read the nature and feelings of any man who has much character, and Craik Mansell has a good deal of character. But I have always thought him a very honest and capable young man, who might do us credit some day, if he were allowed to have his own way and not be interfered with too much. As for his feelings toward his aunt, they were doubtless those of gratitude, though I have never heard him express himself in any very affectionate terms toward her, owing, no doubt, to a natural reticence of disposition which has been observable in him from childhood."

"You have, however, no reason to believe he cherished any feelings of animosity toward his benefactress?" continued the coroner, somewhat carelessly, "or possessed any inordinate desire after the money she was expecting to leave him at her death?"

"No, sir. Both having minds of their own, they frequently disagreed, especially on business matters; but there was never any bitterness between them, as far as I know, and I never heard him say any thing about his expectations one way or the other. He is a man of much natural force, of strong, if not violent, traits of character; but he has too keen a sense of his own dignity to intimate the existence of desires so discreditable to him."

There was something in this reply and the impartial aspect of the lady delivering it that was worthy of notice, perhaps. And such it would have undoubtedly received from Mr. Byrd, at least, if the words she had used in characterizing this person had not struck him so deeply that he forgot to note any thing further.

"A man of great natural force—of strong, if not violent traits of character," he kept repeating to himself. "The description, as I live, of the person whose picture I attempted to draw last night."

And, ignoring every thing else, he waited with almost sickening expectation for the question that would link this nephew of Mrs. Clemmens either to the tragedy itself, or to that person still in the background, of whose secret connection with a man of this type, he had obtained so curious and accidental a knowledge.

But it did not come. With a quiet abandonment of the by no means exhausted topic, which convinced Mr. Byrd that the coroner had plans and suspicions to which the foregoing questions had given no clue, Dr. Tredwell leaned slowly forward, and, after surveying the witness with a glance of cautious inquiry, asked in a way to concentrate the attention of all present:

"You say that you knew the Widow Clemmens well; that you have always been on friendly terms with her, and are acquainted with her affairs. Does that mean you have been made a confidante of her troubles, her responsibilities, and her cares?"

"Yes, sir; that is, in as far as she ever made a confidant of any one. Mrs. Clemmens was not of a complaining disposition, neither was she by nature very communicative. Only at rare times did she make mention of herself or her troubles: but when she did, it was invariably to me, sir—or so she used to say; and she was not a woman to deceive you in such matters."