Lawyer Darcy seemed strangely reluctant to commence his task. He lingered and lingered, his face pale and agitated, his lips twitching nervously, and the fingers that untied the document before him, trembling. His voice, too, when he spoke, was not quite steady.
"I am afraid," said the lawyer, in that unsteady voice, "that the reading of this will will be a shock—a disappointment! I know it must astonish all, as it did me, and I should like to prepare you for it, before it is read."
There was a surprised and alarmed murmur, but no one spoke.
"You are all aware," the lawyer went on, keeping his eyes resolutely from that drooping figure at the window, "that when Mrs. Leroy made her will after coming to Speckport she bequeathed all she possessed to her ward, Miss Marsh. I drew up the will, and she made no secret of her intentions."
There was another painful pause. Val Blake broke it.
"Of course," he said, impatiently, "we all know Mrs. Leroy left Miss Marsh heiress of Redmon."
"But you do not know," said Mr. Darcy, "that a short time ago—in fact, a few days before her tragical death, she revoked that first will and made a new one."
"What?" the cry was from Val Blake, but no one heeded him; every eye was strained upon the lawyer.
"Made a new one," the lawyer repeated, still averting his eyes from the black form at the window; "a new one, entirely different; leaving, I am sorry to say, Redmon away from Miss Marsh—in point of fact, disinheriting her."
There were two little feminine shrieks from the Misses Blair and McGregor, a hysterical cry from Mrs. Marsh, but the bowed figure at the window never stirred. In the unnatural stillness of her attitude, her face hidden behind her crape mask, there was something more fearful than any outbursts of wild womanly distress.