“This is the last Will and Testament of me, Anne Baines (sometime called Wimple). I revoke all other wills and codicils, and give and bequeath everything that is mine or may be mine to my dear nephew and niece, Walter and Florence Hibbert.”
The maid came and stood on one side and Mrs. North on the other, while Aunt Anne gave a little wink to herself, and pushed aside the end of the lavender ribbon lest it should smudge the paper, and signed “Anne Baines,” looking at every letter as she made it with intense interest.
“I am glad to write that name once more,” she said, and fell back, with a sigh.
CHAPTER XI.
t was a long night that followed. A telegram had arrived from the Hibberts. They were on their way, and coming as fast as possible, they said; but through the dark hours, as Mrs. North sat beside Aunt Anne, she feared that death would come still faster.
Her bronchitis was worse at times; she could hardly breathe; it was only the almost summer-like warmth that saved her. She talked of strange people when she could find voice to do so—people of whom Mrs. North had never heard before; but it seemed somehow as if they had silently entered—as if they filled the house, and were waiting. At midnight and in the still small hours of the morning she could fancy that they were going softly up and down the stairs; that they peered into the room in which Aunt Anne lay—the one to the front that looked down on the long white road stretching from the city to the sea. “Oh, if the Hibberts would come,” Mrs. North said, a dozen times. “I want her to die with her own people. I love her, but I am a stranger.”