'Not at all; it is clear as day.'
Philip did not care to debate the matter with his aunt, so he left the room, and taking his hat, entered the garden.
The garden, as already said, descended from the house to the valley. It consisted of two slopes, divided by a wall; the upper slope ended in a terrace-walk, with the coping of the wall serving as a parapet to it. Access to the lower garden was obtained by a flight of steps at each end. The upper of the two divisions was devoted to flowers, the lower to vegetables, and fruit-trees were trained against the wall that buttressed up the terrace.
Philip paced the upper terrace for several minutes, and was unable to come to a decision; he could not see that the matter was as simple as his aunt pretended. For, as he argued, why should his uncle have taken pains to preserve the original envelope when there was no apparent necessity for so doing. If anyone else had opened the envelope, then he could understand the care taken to preserve it with its superscription, 'The Last Will and Testament of Jeremiah Pennycomequick,' and to conceal the fact that it had been adroitly unclosed.
But who would have been likely to commit such an act? Certainly not Salome, in whose keeping, under lock and key, the will had been. It was hardly possible that it had been tampered with since it was given to her. Was it possible that it had been cancelled before, unknown to Jeremiah?
Philip saw that he had not the data, or had not data sufficient, on which to come to a decision. He must have another interview with Salome. He therefore returned to the house, and meeting a servant in the hall, asked her to request Miss Cusworth to speak with him a few minutes in the garden.
Without delay Salome came. She had not put on a bonnet, but had thrown a gray shawl over her head, and pinned it under her chin like a mill-girl. Some of her burnished hair, like autumn oak-leaves flaming in the evening sun, shone out from under the shawl, and the gray wool contrasted pleasantly with the delicately beautiful complexion, now no longer white, but with flying tinges of colour in it, like a sunset sky in which are drifts of vapour, high aloft, undefined, yet sensitive to the rays of the declining orb. She was deeply wounded, and the changes in her colour followed the fluctuations of resentment, humiliation, anger and pain in her heart.
She had been crying—Philip saw that—for though she had wiped her eyes, the tears were still near the surface, and with difficulty restrained from overflowing.
'Miss Cusworth,' said Philip, with stiffness, but an attempt at graciousness, 'I regret that I addressed you a few moments ago without that charity which I was bound to entertain. I was surprised, indignant, and rushed to a conclusion which may prove to have been formed too precipitately. I shall be greatly—very greatly obliged, if you will accept my apology, and allow me to ask you a series of questions on the subject of the will, to enable me to form a matured opinion as to the manner in which it was cancelled, and by whom it was done; two points that appear to me at this moment by no means as clear as they did a quarter of an hour ago, because a close examination of the envelope has shown me that it was opened recently, and in a manner that seems to me suspicious.'
'I will answer any questions you put—as far as it is in my ability to answer them.'