When Mr. Pratt entered the library of Miss Stevens’ late residence, at ten o’clock on this eventful morning, he found the room crowded with a body of men clad in mourning garb and solemnly waiting in various stages of uneasiness for the approach of the long-expected moment.
As the lawyer silently took his seat behind a baize-covered table, the troubled faces grew visibly more troubled; and as he produced sundry important-looking documents and laid them on the table, each countenance was stamped with mingled emotions, eager expectancy in many cases being linked with shame and avarice.
“Gentlemen,” began the old lawyer, “I must trouble each of you to give me in writing a concise statement of the time, place, and circumstances attending your several offers and rejections, in order that I may have documentary proof that you are entitled to the legacies left you by the terms of Miss Stevens’ will.
“Documentary proof!” At those unexpected words the emotion that marked the faces of the strange assembly changed to unmistakable concern. Was this some disagreeable joke? No, the old lawyer waited with unmoved face for the fulfilment of his demand. There was a momentary hesitation. Then, filing up in due order, the applicants, one by one, seated themselves at the table before the old attorney and wrote the account demanded.
As the last statement was signed, the portières of the library were suddenly drawn back, and a tall, heavily veiled figure advanced slowly into the middle of the room. Then, as she raised her hand and drew back the thick gauze that masked her face, a cry of terror echoed through the house.
The woman was Eleanor Stevens!
“Wait,” she commanded. “Don’t be alarmed; I am no ghost. The Miss Stevens who died a year ago in the Black Forest was not the Miss Stevens whose loss you are so deeply mourning.
“By a stupid blunder of the peasants with whom I was staying, an exchange of names occurred between myself and an invalid girl whom I had befriended; so that when she died, her death certificate was issued under the name of Eleanor Stevens.
“Some weeks earlier I had been influenced by daily contact with one whose life was fading rapidly away to draw up my will in legal form and to send it home to my lawyer.
“When I left so suddenly for Europe a year and a half ago it was because of a conversation overheard between several of my seeming admirers which changed all my ideas of manly chivalry in affairs of the heart, and which drove me abroad, as I supposed, forever.