She clinched her hands to avoid stamping forth her impatience.
“Now, at once,” she said.
“But there must be witnesses, Mevrouw.”
“Must there? Well, there are the servants, if some one can hold the horse, and—” She stopped.
“Witnesses,” she repeated. “You mean people who must learn what I have just told you? Oh, but that is infamous! No, no! Do you hear? I will not have it. I don’t care for your infamous laws. What I have said is between you and me. As long as I live no ‘witnesses’ shall know it.”
“You wish to make a secret will,” replied the lawyer, coldly. “Well, there is no objection to that. I will write it out for you, and you can copy and seal it. Then I draw up a deed of deposit, and the witnesses only witness that deed. But all this will take time. My guests will be thinking of departing. My wife—”
“Draw up a form,” exclaimed Ursula; “I will copy it to-night. My father and Gerard will respect my plainly stated wishes, even if—something were to happen to-night.”
Her voice dropped.
The notary glanced sideways, as he wrote, at the tall figure pacing restlessly to and fro. She was not natural, not herself; and herself, in his eyes, was strange enough for anything. That bandage! How had she come by so sudden a wound? What was the meaning of this unseemly hurry? He wondered uneasily whether this strange woman was minded to make away with herself. He resolved to do what he could to prevent it—a Christian duty, if rather an unwilling one.
“Here is the paper,” he said, rising. “Nothing more can, with decency, be done to-night. It has, you will understand, not the slightest legal value.”