"I am sorry to have been the occasion of disturbing you," he said with stiff formality, "and I am very much obliged, certainly," he added, as he took up the keys.
"I may consider myself dismissed from the presence?" she asked saucily. "Then, I will permit myself a cup of chocolate and a roll, and be ready for any further commands."
She frisked out of the door, and, frowning heavily, he sat down to the table and opened the top-drawer, which yielded instantly to the first key that he selected.
The first paper, too, on which he laid his hand was the will, signed and witnessed, regularly executed, all its provisions seeming, as he glanced through it, reasonable and feasible. As he laid it aside, he experienced the business man's satisfaction with a document duly capable of the ends desired. Then he opened with a sudden flicker of curiosity a bulky envelope placed with the will and addressed to himself. He read it through, the natural interest on his face succeeded by amazement, increasing gradually to fear, the chill drops starting from every pore. He had grown ghastly white before he had concluded the perusal, and for a long time he sat as motionless as if turned to stone.
The September day glowed outside in sumptuous splendor. A glad wind sprang up and sped afield. Geraldine, her breakfast finished, a broad hat canted down over her eyes, rushed through the hall as noisily as a boy, prodded up the old hound, and ran him a race around the semicircle of the drive. A trained hound he had been in his youth, and he was wont to conceal and deny certain ancient accomplishments. But even he realized that it was waste of breath to say nay to the persistent Geraldine. He resigned himself to go through all his repertoire,--was a dead dog, begged, leaped a stick back and forth, went lame, and in his newly awakened interest performed several tricks of which she had been unaware. Her joyful cries of commendation--"Played an encore! _an encore!_ He did, he did! Cutest old dog in the United States!" caught Mrs. Keene's attention.
"Geraldine," she screamed from an upper window, "come in out of the sun! You will have a sun-stroke--and ruin your complexion besides! You know you ought to be helping that man with those papers,--he won't be able to do anything without you!" Her voice quavered on the last words, as if she suddenly realized "that man" might overhear her,--as indeed he did. But he made no sign. He sat still, stultified and stony, silently gazing at the paper in his hands.