"True for you; but I still contend that the possibilities are interesting—perhaps infinitely so. For instance——" he opened his hand and showed me what lay snugly ensconced within.
"Looks like a piece of glass."
"Man, don't you know a telescopic lens when you see it!"
Warriner produced a silk handkerchief, and with it carefully cleaned and polished what I now fully recognized as a bit of some optical apparatus. He held it up to his eye, and squinted through it. "Do you know there is something peculiar about this blooming lens," he said at length. "I think I'll drive over to Calverton after luncheon, and make a laboratory test. Who knows...."
"What?"
"Tell you later—if there is anything to tell." And not another word on the subject could I get out of him.
Mrs. Anthony and Betty had been over to the cemetery all morning, and they did not appear at luncheon. Miss Trevor, looking as implacable as a Medusa-head, a comparison inevitably invited by the snaky black ringlets depending on either cheek (an ante-bellum monstrosity which she seemed to affect out of sheer perversity), presided at the table, and most of the conversation was carried on in monosyllables. The poor girl did look wretchedly careworn, and I had the uneasy consciousness of being in part a confidant of her unhappiness through my involuntary espionage in the affair of the whispering gallery. But there was nothing that I could say or do to relieve the tension of the situation. How much did she know concerning the mystery of Francis Graeme's death? To what extent was she an accessory to the crime, if crime it could be proved? When she handed me my tea it was quite in the grand Lucrezia Borgia manner, and it was as certain as anything could be that she and I must remain antagonists until the end of time. But I could make allowances. Eunice Trevor had played the part of poor relation all her life, and the bread of dependence is both a dry and a bitter morsel in the mouth. Not that Betty Graeme would ever have said or done anything to emphasize the obligation under which her cousin's daily existence was passed; on the contrary, I knew that she treated Eunice with unvarying kindness and consideration. But when one is living on the broken meats of charity it is destructive to be always nibbling, between meals, at one's own heart.
Warriner went off to Calverton, and I had a horse saddled in order to ride over the farm and so get a general idea of my inheritance. And indeed it was a glorious one; insensibly a new and stimulating ichor entered into my veins; this was my own country, the chosen home of my forebears: this gracious and beautiful land was part of myself; deep down in its generous bosom went the essential roots of my being, and I thrilled with the consciousness of a new life, a life far more satisfying and abundant than I had ever known before; I was Hildebrand of the "Hundred."
Late in the afternoon I returned, and ran upstairs to freshen my appearance before joining the ladies for a cup of tea on the library terrace. As I passed the sick room I heard the sounds of a violent altercation, and I recognized the voices as belonging to Eunice Trevor and John Thaneford; how indecent for them to be quarrelling in the presence of a man actually moribund! I had no taste for more eavesdropping, but the door was partially ajar, and I could not help overhearing one significant sentence. Eunice Trevor was speaking.