itherto been loud
now became deafening, and I realized that, contrary to Eunice
Westonhaugh's expectation, the supper had been spread in the kitchen and
that I was likely to run amuck of the whole despicable crowd in any
effort I might make to get a bite for the famished baby.

I therefore naturally hesitated to push open the door, fearing to draw
attention to myself; and when I did succeed in lifting the latch and
making a small crack, I was so astonished by the sudden lull in the
general babble, that I drew hastily back and was for descending the
stairs in sudden retreat.

But I was prevented from carrying out this cowardly impulse, by catching
the sound of the lawyer's voice, addressing the assembled guests.

"You have eaten and you have drunk," he was saying; "you are therefore
ready for the final toast. Brothers, nephews--heirs all of Anthony
Westonhaugh, I rise to propose the name of your generous benefactor,
who, if spirits walk this earth, must certainly be with us to-night."

A grumble from more than one throat and an uneasy hitch from such
shoulders as I could see through my narrow vantage-hole testified to the
rather doubtful pleasure with which this suggestion was received. But
the lawyer's tones lost none of their animation as he went on to say:

"The bottle, from which your glasses are to be replenished for this
final draft, he has himself provided. So anxious was he that it should
be of the very best and altogether worthy of the occasion it is to
celebrate, that he gave into my charge, almost with his dying breath,
this key, telling me that it would unlock a cupboard here in which he
had placed a bottle of wine of the very rarest vintage. This is the key,
and yonder, if I do not mistake, is the cupboard."

They had already quaffed a dozen toasts. Perhaps this was why they
accepted this proposition in a sort of panting silence, which remained
unbroken while the lawyer crossed the floor, unlocked the cupboard and
brought out before them a bottle which he held up before their eyes with
a simulated glee almost saturnine.

"Isn't that a bottle to make your eyes dance? The very cobwebs on it are
eloquent. And see! look at this label. Tokay, friends, real Tokay! How
many of you ever had the opportunity of drinking real Tokay before?"

A long deep sigh from a half-dozen throats in which some strong but
hitherto repressed passion, totally incomprehensible to me, found sudden
vent, rose in one simultaneous