“Then, there has always existed the possibility of such a change? You must have known this even if you failed to talk on the subject.”
“Yes, I sometimes thought my uncle was moved by a passing impulse to make such a change; but I never believed it to be more than a passing impulse. He showed me too much affection. He spoke too frequently of days when I studied under his eye and took my pleasure in his company.”
“You acknowledge, then, that lately you yourself began to doubt his constancy to the old idea. Will you say what first led you to think that what you had regarded as a momentary impulse was strengthening into a positive determination?”
“Mr. Coroner, if you will pardon me I must take exception to that word positive. He could never have been positive at any time as to what he would finally do. Else why two wills? It was what I heard the servants say on my return from one of my absences which first made me question whether I had given sufficient weight to the possibility of my cousin’s influence over Uncle being strong and persistent enough to drive him into active measures. I allude of course to the visit paid him by his lawyer and the witnessing on the part of his man Clarke and his nurse Wealthy to a document they felt sure was a will. As it was well known throughout the house that one had already been drawn up in full accordance with the promises so often made me, they showed considerable feeling, and it was only natural that this should arouse mine, especially as that whole day’s proceedings, the coming of a second lawyer with two men whom nobody knew, was never explained or even alluded to in any conversation I afterwards held with my uncle. I thought it all slightly alarming but still I held to my faith in him. He was a sick man and might have crotchets.”
“At what time and from whom did you definitely hear the truth about that day’s proceedings—that two wills had been drawn up, alike in all respects save that in one you were named as the chief beneficiary and in the other your cousin from England?”
At this question, which evidently had power to trouble him, Edgar lost for the first time his air of easy confidence. Did he fear that he was about to incur some diminution of the good feeling which had hitherto upheld him in any statement he chose to make? I watched him very closely to see. But his answer hardly enlightened me.
The question, if you will remember, was when and where he received definite confirmation of what had been told him concerning two wills.
“In my uncle’s room the night before he died,” was his reply, uttered with a gloom wholly unnatural to him even in a time of trouble. “He had wished to see me and we were talking pleasantly enough, when he suddenly changed his tone and I heard what he had done and how my future hung on the whim of a moment.”
“Can you repeat his words?”
“I cannot. The impression they made is all that is left me. I was too agitated—too much taken aback—for my brain to work clearly or my memory to take in more than the great fact. You see it was not only my position as heir to an immense fortune I saw threatened; but the dearer hope it involved and what was as precious as all the rest, the loss of my past as I had conceived it, for I had truly believed that I stood next to his daughter in my uncle’s affections; too close indeed for any such tampering with my future prospects.”