Her eyes in their return journey had reached the great wooden fireplace. Although she did not know it, it was a fine specimen of old carving. What she did notice were the rounded posts which served as pillars. There were four, two longer and two shorter, each supporting a shelf on which there were ornaments. She wondered if the posts would turn. Probably something recurred to her mind which she had read about a movable post, though she could not have said just what it was or where she had read it. She had a notion that she would try if the posts in the fireplace turned, when she was stopped by a remark which came from the man in the bed.
"You're looking in the wrong place; so as I don't want your search to occupy you days, I'll tell you where it is." Even as he spoke it struck her--rather as a vague suspicion than anything else--that he did not want her to pay too much attention to the fireplace. She waited for him to continue, which he did at once. "You see the bracket in the corner on my left. Go to it. Take down the vase which stands upon it, then lift the bracket out of its socket." She did as he told her. "You see the boss just at the top of the socket. That releases the catch. Press it, then slide upwards that part of the panel which is immediately at your right."
Again she followed his directions. A portion of the woodwork, three or four inches wide, and about a foot in length, yielding to her touch, disclosed an open space behind.
"There's an envelope in it, a blue envelope; take it out."
There was an envelope, apparently nothing else. On the front was an inscription, whose crabbed characters had apparently been written by a feminine hand. "This envelope contains Cuthbert Grahame's will, and is not to be opened till after his death." The two flaps at the back were secured by big red seals.
"Never mind what it says. I'm Cuthbert Grahame, and I tell you to open the envelope, although I don't happen to be dead. Take out the paper which you'll find inside. Read it; you can read it aloud if you like."
She read it aloud. The handwriting was identical with the cramped caligraphy on the envelope.
"'I give and bequeath all the property of which I die possessed, both in real and personal estate, to Margaret Wallace, absolutely, for her sole use and benefit.--CUTHBERT GRAHAME. Witnesses, NANNIE FORESHAW, DAVID TWELVES, M.D., Edin.'"
With the exception of a date at the top that was all the paper contained.
"That is the will you broke by marrying me, or, if you prefer it, which I broke by marrying you. There isn't much to be said for the phraseology--it wasn't drafted in a lawyer's office. Nannie wrote it down to my dictation--at that table over by the window there. She doesn't write a very excellent fist, but it'll serve. That's as sound a will as if it had been drawn by a council of lawyers, and, to the lay mind, a good deal plainer than they'd have made it."