One by one, and without so much as an ordinary "How d'ye do?" they have all slipped into the dining-room. The men have assumed a morose air, which they fondly believe to be indicative of melancholy; the women, being by nature more hypocritical, present a more natural and suitable appearance. All are seated in sombre garments and dead silence.
Marcia, in crape and silk of elaborate design, is looking calm but full of decorous grief. Philip—who has grown almost emaciated during these past months—is the only one who wears successfully an impression of the most stolid indifference. He is leaning against one of the windows, gazing out upon the rich lands and wooded fields which so soon will be either all his or nothing to him. After the first swift glance of recognition he has taken no notice of Molly, nor she of him. A shuddering aversion fills her toward him, a distaste bordering on horror. His very pallor, the ill-disguised misery of his whole appearance,—which he seeks but vainly to conceal under a cold and sneering exterior,—only adds to her dislike.
A sickening remembrance of their last meeting in the wood at Brooklyn makes her turn away from him with palpable meaning on his entrance, adding thereby one pang the more to the bitterness of his regret. The meeting is to her a trial,—to him an agony harder to endure than he had even imagined.
Feeling strangely out of place and nervous, and saddened by memories of happy days spent in this very room so short a time ago, Molly has taken a seat a little apart from the rest, and sits with loosely-folded hands upon her knees, her head bent slightly downward.
Cecil, seeing the dejection of her attitude, leaves her own place, and, drawing a chair close to hers, takes one of her hands softly between her own.
Then the door opens, and Mr. Buscarlet, with a sufficiently subdued though rather triumphant and consequential air, enters.
He bows obsequiously to Marcia, who barely returns the salute. Detestable little man! She finds some consolation in the thought that at all events his time is nearly over; that probably—nay, surely—he is now about to administer law for the last time at Herst.
He bows in silence to the rest of the company,—with marked deference to Miss Massereene,—and then involuntarily each one stirs in his or her seat and settles down to hear the will read.
A will is a mighty thing, and requires nice handling. Would that I were lawyer enough to give you this particular one in full, with all its many bequests and curious directions. But, alas! ignorance forbids. The sense lingers with me, but all the technicalities and running phrases and idiotic repetitions have escaped me.
To most of those present Mr. Amherst has left bequests; to Lady Stafford five thousand pounds; to Plantagenet Potts two thousand pounds; to Mrs. Darley's son the same; to all the servants handsome sums of money, together with a year's wages; to Mrs. Nesbit, the housekeeper, two hundred pounds a year for her life. And then the attorney pauses and assumes an important air, and every one knows the end is nigh.