"Bryan's letter, Frank," Jack remarked quickly. "Don't you think you ought to open it? He said that if anything happened to him you were to read it first, and afterwards I was to see the letter if you thought best. I remember he seemed much in earnest when he gave it to me."
Frank frowned, and then shook his head.
"Do you know I had forgotten, Jack? But I don't think Bryan meant us to disturb the letter until we know that the worst has happened to him and we don't know this yet; we only fear it."
For a moment Jack was silent, but when she spoke again her voice and manner expressed a quiet firmness.
"I think you are mistaken, Frank. There must be something in Bryan's letter that he wants us to do for him. It may be something that would come afterwards, but it also may be something that we could do for him now. Of course you must judge, but this is the way I feel about it."
Jack, who had put on a deep violet toned velvet dressing gown over her underclothes, now sat down in an arm chair, leaning thoughtfully forward and resting her chin in the palm of her hand.
She did not intend to influence her husband; but having expressed her own thought, she quietly awaited his decision.
Frank, however, was worried and undecided. In order to think more clearly, he got up and began walking nervously up and down his room.
"I don't know what to do, Jack," he argued. "If Bryan still lives he may, of course, recover and I would not then like to feel that I have pryed into his secret. On the other hand, you may be right and Bryan may have made some simple request of us which we could carry out for him at once. Bryan is a sentimental chap always. I wish, this time, he had been more explicit."
Nevertheless, Frank must have finally decided to accept his wife's point of view for, after another few moments, he walked over to a small safe which occupied a corner in his room and opened it. Then he took out the box in which he had placed Captain MacDonnell's letter and the next instant had broken the seal and was reading its contents.