“I have it, Father.”
A moment’s silence. Edgar’s breath stopped on his lips; mine had come haltingly from my breast ever since I entered the room.
“Now, burn it.”
Instinctively she shrank back, but he repeated the command with a force which startled us all and made Orpha’s hand shake as she thrust the document into the flame and then, as it caught fire, dropped it into the gaping bowl.
As it flared up and the scent of burning paper filled the room, he made a mighty effort and sat almost erect, watching the flaming edges curl and drop away till all was consumed.
“A will made a few weeks ago of which I have repented,” he declared quite steadily. “It had a twin, drawn up on the same day. That is the one I desire to stand. It is not in the envelope I hold in this other hand. This envelope is empty but you will find the will itself in—”
A choke—a gasp. The exertion had been too much for him. With a look of consummate fear distorting his features, he centered his gaze on his child, then sought to turn it on—which of us? On Edgar, or on me?
We never knew. The light in his eye went out before his glance reached its goal.
Edgar Quenton Bartholomew was dead, and we, his two namesakes—the lesser and the greater—stood staring the one upon the other, not knowing to which that term of greater rightfully belonged.