The young widow brooded over those words night and day.
She hated Howard Templeton more than ever.
She would have given the whole world, had it been hers, to wrest that fortune from her enemy's grasp, and leave him poor and friendless to fight his way through the hard world.
"Oh! if I only could find that will," she thought wildly. "Is it true that Mr. St. John made it, or was he deceiving me? He was utterly insane. Could one expect truth from a madman?"
Gradually, as weary weeks flew by, she began to believe that Mr. St. John had deceived her.
She felt quite sure in her own mind, after a little while, that he had never made the will.
He had fully meant for Howard Templeton to inherit his wealth.
Yet bitterly as she regretted its loss she could not bring herself to hate the memory of the old man she had married, and who had loved her for a little while with so fond and foolish a passion.
The memory of his dreadful death was too strong upon her.
She woke at night from dreadful dreams that recalled that last awful day of her husband's life, and lay shuddering and weeping, and praying to forget that fearful face, and blood-curdling, maniacal laugh that still rung in her shocked hearing.