“Then you don’t know?” said Lucile, wide eyed.
The girl shook her head, eyeing the document with a puzzled expression. Gradually bewilderment changed to surprise, surprise to incredulity.
“It’s the will!” she cried. “The will of Henri Charloix! Oh, it cannot be so; it can’t—you say you found it in here?” she questioned, and, without waiting for an answer, 157 plunged her hand into the opening, while Lucile drew nearer to her.
“May I look?” she asked, and the girl nodded, turning luminous eyes upon the pretty, awed face at her shoulder. “You may prove to be the best friend I have ever yet known,” she said, solemnly, and drew from the secret hiding-place a very ordinary tin box, with a scrap of writing bound to it with a coarse cord.
The wording was in French, but Jeanette, translating for her benefit, read: “To be opened by my little daughter Jeanette on the event of her twenty-first birthday. Signed, Edouard Renard.”
“It is from my father!” cried Jeanette, sinking down, all white and trembling, upon a worn old couch and clasping the precious box to her as though she could not let it go. “Father! father!” she cried, and, bending her head upon her arms, sobbed as though her heart would break.
Lucile turned and tiptoed from the room, thinking she had intruded long enough; but a soft call from Jeanette made her pause. She seated herself on the stairs and waited.
To Lucile’s tingling consciousness that short wait seemed an eternity. Her head ached with the flood of imagination that besieged it, her two hands grasped the banister to keep her rooted to the spot, while her feet tapped an impatient tattoo on the floor.
At last the longed-for summons came.
“Lucile,” called a low, unsteady voice, “will you come to me?”