To this there succeeded a silence, broken only by the sibilant drawing in of the younger woman's breath.
"I am indeed a lawyer," I said at length. "In what way can I be of service?"
"We see no one," said the imperious voice abruptly. "You must therefore pardon the manner in which I have had you called in."
I was now able to discern something through the gloom.
The speaker sat in extreme shadow. Her dress was a blur in the darkness, faintly outlining her person, which seemed to be of medium height, though in the great chair she looked shrunken and huddled together. Her eyes, faint points of light, were steadfastly fixed on mine, but her face was, I thought, in such deep shadow that I could not make it out.
But the concentration points, so to speak, were not her eyes, but her hands. They lay in her lap motionless, and yet they were extraordinarily alive. Even in that light their emaciated condition testified to her extreme age; but they were not decrepit, they seemed to glow with a steady light, an inward and consuming energy.
"You may leave us, Emily," said the voice, and Emily, who had been hovering with what I somehow felt to be a hint of malice, unwillingly withdrew. The other closed her eyes until the shutting of the door assured us of privacy.
"I am dying," she began suddenly in her strange, impersonal manner.
"Do not interrupt me," she added coldly as I was about to utter some inanity. "I desire to be certain of one thing while there is time, namely, that my wishes respecting the disposition of my body shall be respected—in every particular."
Her manner indicated nothing out of the ordinary. She might have been speaking of the merest commonplace.