“Fortunately, yes,” he allowed.
“There you have the advantage of me. I have only a general knowledge of the same. They were not unfolded before my eyes.”
He did not respond to this suggestion as I had some hope that he would, but stood in silence, drumming nervously with his fingers on the framework of the window standing open at his side. My heart, always sensitive to changes of emotion, began pounding in my breast. He was meditating some action or formulating some disclosure, the character of which I could not even guess at. I saw resolution climaxing in the expression of his eye.
“Quenton, there is something you don’t know.” These words came with slow intensity; he was looking fairly at me now. “There is another will, a former one, drawn up and attested to previous to those which made a nightmare of our uncle’s final days. That one I have also seen, and what is more to the point, I believe it to be still in existence, either in some drawer of my uncle’s desk or in the hands of Mr. Dunn, our legal adviser, and consequently producible at any time. I will tell you on my honor that by the terms of this first will—the only one which will stand—I am given everything, over and above certain legacies, which were alike in all three wills.”
“No mention of Orpha?”
“Yes. He leaves her a stated sum and with such expressions of confidence and affection that no one can doubt he did what he did from a conception, mistaken perhaps but sincere, that he was taking the best course to secure her happiness.”
“Was this will made previous to my coming or after?”
“Before.”
“How long before, Edgar? You cannot question my right to know.”
“I question nothing but the good taste of this conversation on the part of both of us, while Uncle lies cold in the house!”