"On the following day, Uncle Falcon sent for another lawyer, a young man just opening a practice in Riversmead. He arrived with his clerk, but only spent a very few minutes in the library, and as we have never heard from him since, no transaction of importance can have taken place. Mr. Inglestry had the will and the codicil.
"A few nights later, I was summoned to my uncle's room. He neither spoke nor moved again; but his eyes were still bright beneath the bushy eyebrows. He knew me to the end. Those living eyes, in the already dead body, seemed to say: 'Diana, I shall win.'
"At dawn, the brave, dauntless soul left the body, which had long clogged it, and launched out into the Unknown. My first conscious prayer was: that he might not there meet either my father or my mother, but some noble kindred spirit, worthy of him. Cousin David, you would have liked Uncle Falcon."
"I am sure I should have," said David Rivers.
"Go into the library," commanded Diana, "the door opposite the dining-room, and study the portrait of him hanging over the mantel-piece, painted by a famous artist, two years ago."
David went.
Diana rang, and sent for a glass of water; went to the window, and looked out; crossed to a mirror, and nervously smoothed her abundant hair. Hitherto she had been cantering smoothly over open country. Now she was approaching the leap. She must keep her nerve—or she would find herself riding for a fall.
"Did you notice his eyes?" she asked, as David sat down again.
"Yes," he answered; "wonderful eyes; bright, as golden amber. You must not be offended—you would not be, if you could know how beautiful they were—but the only eyes I ever saw at all like them, belonged to a Macacus Cynomolgus, a little African monkey—who was a great pet of mine."
"I quite understand," said Diana. "I know the eyes of that species of monkey. Now, tell me? Did Uncle Falcon's amber eyes say anything to you?"