“You are ill,” cried Eva.
“No, Eva,” rejoined Mrs. Pell, “it is worse than illness.”
The tears welled up in her eyes. She could say no more.
Sydney was not with her, neither was he in his room. The girls were clamorous to know what was the matter.
“Tell them, Roy, I can’t,” Mrs. Pell at last found voice to say.
Rex could not stay to hear. And Roy never suffered as he did in the few moments it took him to relate his foster brother’s crime. It seemed as though it were as cruel as to drive nails into the fair flesh of the young girls. And yet they must know.
“How could he do it, how could he?” Eva murmured again and again.
“Perhaps he didn’t,” Jess suddenly exclaimed. “He’s nothing to show for it—the second will, I mean. Perhaps there’s something wrong with his brain, and he only imagines there was one and he destroyed it.”
But Roy shook his head. There was Ann to prove, if necessary, that she had signed the other document.
For a long while they sat there. It seemed as if black despair had settled upon them and there was no way out.