He was himself again; shaken with feeling but winsome in voice, manner and speech. And it was the sincerity of his feeling which made him so. He had truly loved his uncle. No one could doubt that, not even myself who had truly loved him also.
“On what terms did you leave him? Surely you can remember that?”
Edgar’s eye flashed. As I noted it and the resolution which was fast overcoming the sadness which had distinguished his features up till now, I held my breath in apprehension, for here was something to fear.
“When I left him it was with a mind much more at ease than when he first showed me these two wills. For my faith in him had come back. He would burn one of those wills before he died, but it would not be the one which would put to shame by its destruction, him who had been as a child to him from the day of his early orphanage.”
The Coroner himself was startled by the effect made by these words upon the crowd, and probably blamed his own leniency in allowing this engaging witness to express himself so fully.
In a tone which sounded sharp enough in contrast to the mellow one which had preceded it, he said:
“That is what you thought. We had rather listen to facts.”
Edgar bowed, still gracious, still the darling of the men and women ranged before him, many of whom remembered his boyhood; while I sat rigid, realizing how fully I was at the mercy of his attractions and would continue to be till I had an opportunity to speak, and possibly afterwards, for prejudice raises a wall which nothing but time can batter down.
And Orpha? What of her? How was she taking all this? In my anxiety, I cast one look in her direction. To my astonishment she sat unveiled and was gazing at Edgar with an intentness which slowly but surely forced his head to turn and his eye to seek hers. An instant thus, then she pulled down her veil, and the flush just rising to his cheek was lost again in pallor.
Unconsciously the muscles of my hands relaxed; for some reason life had lost some of the poignant terror it had held for me a moment before. A drowning man will catch at straws; so will a lover; and I was both.