"Nothing," was the consoling reply; and, as the sleigh just than drew up before his door, Frank alighted from it, and said to himself as he ran up the steps:
"I believe I have been riding with the devil, and have made a league with him!"
He found the house thoroughly aired and cleansed from all signs of the recent funeral; and when, at one o'clock, he sat down to lunch in the handsome dining room, and sipped his favorite claret, and ate his foreign preserves, and thought how much comfort and luxury money could buy, he was sure he had done well for himself and his children after him. But Frank Tracy never knew real peace of mind again, until years after, when, with his sin confessed, he was freed from the shadow which followed him day and night, walking by him when he walked, sitting by him when he sat, and watching by him when he slept, until life seemed at times unbearable.
He made his will as he had said he would, but he went to Springfield to have it drawn up, for he knew that Colvin, or any lawyer whom he might employ in Shannondale, would wonder at it. He also wrote out what he called his dying request to his children, in case he should die before his brother. In this he stated emphatically his wish that Jerry should have her share of whatever might come to them from the Tracy estate, the same as if she were his own child.
"I have a good and sufficient reason for this," he wrote in conclusion, "and I enjoin it upon you to carry out my wishes as readily as you would were I to speak to you from my grave."
This done, Frank felt better, and the shadow at his side was not quite as real as it had been. He put his will and his dying request in a private drawer with Gretchen's photograph and testament. He had kept this last back when the stranger's trunk was sent to the cottage, thinking that if it were missed and inquired for, he could easily produce it as having been mislaid. At the suggestion of Mr. St. Claire he went to New York, to the office of the German line of steamers, and made inquiries with regard to the passengers who had come on a certain ship at such a time. But nothing could be learned of any woman with a child, and after inserting in several of the New York papers a description of the woman, with a request for any information concerning her which could be given, he returned home, with a feeling that he had done all that could be required of him.
He was very kind and even tender to his brother, who for several weeks suffered from low nervous depression, which kept him altogether in his room, to which he refused to admit any one except his attendant and Frank. He had ceased for the time being to talk of Gretchen, and never inquired for the child. Once Frank spoke of her to him and told him where she was, and that she was learning to speak English very rapidly, and growing prettier every day. But Arthur did not seem at all interested and only said,
"How can Mrs. Crawford afford to keep her?"
Others than Arthur asked that question, and among them Dolly, who, with a woman's quick wit, sharpened by something she accidentally saw, divined the truth, which she wrung at last from her husband. There was a fierce quarrel—almost their first,—a sick headache which lasted three days, and a month or more of coldness between the married pair, and then, finding she could accomplish nothing, for Frank was as firm as a rock, Dolly gave up the contest, and tried by economizing in various ways, to save the money which she felt was taken from her children by the little girl, who had become so dear to Mrs. Crawford, that she would not have parted with her had nothing been paid for her keeping.