She read the letter carefully. In Noel Vanstone’s close, cramped handwriting, it filled two pages of letter-paper, and ended at the top of the third page. Instead of using an envelope, Mrs. Lecount folded it, neatly and securely, in the old-fashioned way. She lit the taper in the ink-stand, and returned the letter to the writer.
“Seal it, Mr. Noel,” she said, “with your own hand, and your own seal.” She extinguished the taper, and handed him the pen again. “Address the letter, sir,” she proceeded, “to Admiral Bartram, St. Crux-in-the-Marsh, Essex. Now, add these words, and sign them, above the address: To be kept in your own possession, and to be opened by yourself only, on the day of my death—or ‘Decease,’ if you prefer it—Noel Vanstone. Have you done? Let me look at it again. Quite right in every particular. Accept my congratulations, sir. If your wife has not plotted her last plot for the Combe-Raven money, it is not your fault, Mr. Noel—and not mine!”
Finding his attention released by the completion of the letter, Noel Vanstone reverted at once to purely personal considerations. “There is my packing-up to be thought of now,” he said. “I can’t go away without my warm things.”
“Excuse me, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount, “there is the Will to be signed first; and there must be two persons found to witness your signature.” She looked out of the front window, and saw the carriage waiting at the door. “The coachman will do for one of the witnesses,” she said. “He is in respectable service at Dumfries, and he can be found if he happens to be wanted. We must have one of your own servants, I suppose, for the other witness. They are all detestable women; but the cook is the least ill-looking of the three. Send for the cook, sir; while I go out and call the coachman. When we have got our witnesses here, you have only to speak to them in these words: ‘I have a document here to sign, and I wish you to write your names on it, as witnesses of my signature.’ Nothing more, Mr. Noel! Say those few words in your usual manner—and, when the signing is over, I will see myself to your packing-up, and your warm things.”
She went to the front door, and summoned the coachman to the parlor. On her return, she found the cook already in the room. The cook looked mysteriously offended, and stared without intermission at Mrs. Lecount. In a minute more the coachman—an elderly man—came in. He was preceded by a relishing odor of whisky; but his head was Scotch; and nothing but his odor betrayed him.
“I have a document here to sign,” said Noel Vanstone, repeating his lesson; “and I wish you to write your names on it, as witnesses of my signature.”
The coachman looked at the will. The cook never removed her eyes from Mrs. Lecount.
“Ye’ll no object, sir,” said the coachman, with the national caution showing itself in every wrinkle on his face—“ye’ll no object, sir, to tell me, first, what the Doecument may be?”
Mrs. Lecount interposed before Noel Vanstone’s indignation could express itself in words.
“You must tell the man, sir, that this is your Will,” she said. “When he witnesses your signature, he can see as much for himself if he looks at the top of the page.”