"It is illiterate writing, certainly; and the whole concern dilapidated to the last degree," goes on Rodney, still regarding the soiled paper with curiosity mingled with aversion. "Any objection to my putting it in the fire?"
"'7—4,'" murmurs she, absently, still staring intently at the wall.
"It looks like the production of a lunatic,—a very dangerous lunatic,—an habitue of Colney Hatch," muses Geoffrey, who is growing more and more puzzled with the paper's contents the oftener he reads it.
"'Top corner,—right hand,'" goes on Mona, taking no heed of him, and speaking in the same low, mysterious, far-off tone.
"Yes, exactly; you have it by heart; but what does it mean, and what are you staring at that wall for?" asks he, hopelessly, going to her side.
"It means—the missing will," returns she, in a voice that would have done credit to a priestess of Delphi. As she delivers this oracular sentence, she points almost tragically towards the wall in question.
"Eh!" says Geoffrey, starting, not so much at the meaning of her words as at the words themselves. Have the worry and excitement of the last hour unsettled her brain!
"My dear child, don't talk like that," he says, nervously: "you're done up, you know. Come to bed."
"I sha'n't go to bed at all," declares Mrs. Geoffrey, excitedly. "I shall never go to bed again, I think, until all this is cleared up. Geoffrey, bring me over that chair."
She motions impatiently with her hand, and Geoffrey, being compelled to it by her vehemence, draws a high chair close to that part of the wall that seems to have claimed her greatest attention.