She dried her eyes, and tried to hide that they had been wet, as she heard the call. The day was getting on.
"Is Littelby not come yet?"
"Yes, I think he is. Some one came a few minutes ago, and is downstairs with Mrs. Dundyke. I think I hear them coming up."
Mrs. Dundyke was coming into the room with a gentleman, a middle-aged man with a sharp nose and pleasant dark eyes. It was Mr. Littelby. They were left alone together—the lawyer and the dying man. But it was a very short and simple task, this will-making. Over almost as soon as begun.
"He asked me to tie you up with trustees, Emma," said the dying man; "but I have left all to you—children, and money, and all else. You will love them, won't you, when I am gone?"
"Oh, Robert, yes!" she said, with a burst of sorrow. "I wish I and they could go with you."
"And, Emma, mind that you prosecute this search. I have asked Littelby to help you, and he will. He says he expects to leave London at the end of the year, for he is in negotiation with another firm; but I dare say it will be found before then. Let that search be your first and greatest task."
She said it should be—she would have promised anything in that parting hour. She lay, with her pretty hair on the counterpane, and her wet eyes turned to him, devouring his last looks, listening to his last words. Almost literally the last in this world, for, before the close of the afternoon, Robert Carr fell into a lethargy, from which he did not awake alive.
And those two lone women were together in the house of the dead—widows indeed. The one deprived of her young husband almost on the threshold of life; the other bereft, she knew not how, of her many years' partner. Poor Mrs. Dundyke had hardly wanted more sorrow in her desolate home.