“There may be half a dozen, for aught I know,” she mused, “and I have a curiosity to see what taste and texture represent the previous generations of my Gerald’s family.”
Clipping busily away, she cut the whole outer cover off, when a piece of worsted work came to light.
“Ah!” said Lady Bromley. “Miss Winchester’s ancestor, next removed, was evidently fond of crewel embroidery! It is a very pretty design—ferns and honeysuckles—and there are an endless number of stitches in it; if it could only speak, what an interesting history it might give me of the girl or woman who wrought it!
“But this is strange!” she added, a moment after. “It has been partially cut away on three sides, and”—lifting it—“so has the next cover, which is a piece of ordinary tapestry, and the next, also, which is of ordinary horsehair, and probably the original covering.
“Generation the fourth, and last,” she observed in a tone of satisfaction, as she removed the ragged hair-cloth and threw it to one side, for her occupation was becoming rather distasteful, on account of the dust which arose from her efforts.
This left only a layer of cotton to be disposed of, and, as she gathered it up and laid it upon the heap of rags beside her, a low, startled exclamation burst from her lips upon observing that there was a lid in the top of the cricket, and that a leather loop had been tacked upon one side of it, to enable it to be readily lifted from its place.
“Well! I am afraid I have stumbled upon some secret with which I have no business!” rather nervously murmured her ladyship, as she curiously eyed the ancient foot-rest. “What can it mean? Possibly this heirloom, which he has so affected to despise, may prove, after all, to be very precious to ‘my Gerald.’”
She had almost unconsciously grown into the habit of calling him “my Gerald,” her constantly increasing affection for him giving her a certain sense of possession.
“Perhaps we shall discover title-deeds to a great fortune—as we read about in novels—in this dusty, musty little sepulcher which, in all probability, has not been opened for many years,” she went on, with a light, mocking laugh at her romantic suspicion. “And yet”—with a slight start—“every cover except the last had been partially cut away, so, of course, Miss Winchester must have known the secret—possibly she also may have concealed something in here for him to find, and that is why she made him promise never to part with it.”
With her thumb and finger she laid hold of the leather loop and lifted the cover, just enough to ascertain whether the thing was empty or not.