r will understand the
motive which animates me in making this bequest."' He laid the Will on
the table, and ventured to look up. At the same time, Ovid turned to
his mother, struck by the words which had been just read, and eager to
inquire what their meaning might be.

Happily for themselves, the two men never knew what the preservation of
their tranquillity owed to that one moment of delay.

If they had looked at Mrs. Gallilee, when she was first aware of
her position in the Will, they might have seen the incarnate Devil
self-revealed in a human face. They might have read, in her eyes and on
her lips, a warning hardly less fearful than the unearthly writing on
the wall, which told the Eastern Monarch of his coming death. "See
this woman, and know what I can do with her, when she has repelled her
guardian angel, and her soul is left to ME."

But the revelation showed itself, and vanished. Her face was composed
again, when her son and her lawyer looked at it. Her voice was under
control; her inbred capacity for deceit was ready for action. All those
formidable qualities in her nature, which a gentler and wiser training
than hers had been might have held in check--by development of
preservative influences that lay inert--were now driven back to their
lurking-place; leaving only the faintest traces of their momentary
appearance on the surface. Her breathing seemed to be oppressed; her
eyelids drooped heavily--and that was all.

"Is the room too hot for you?" Ovid asked.

It was a harmless question, but any question annoyed her at that moment.
"Nonsense!" she exclaimed irritably.

"The atmosphere of the conservatory is rich in reviving smells," Mr.
Mool remarked. "Do I detect, among the delightful perfumes which reach
us, the fragrant root-stock of the American fern? If I am wrong, Mrs.
Gallilee, may I send you some of the sweet-smelling Maidenhair from my
own little hot-house?" He smiled persuasively. The ferns were already
justifying his confidence in their peace-making virtues, turned
discreetly to account. Those terrible eyes rested on him mercifully.
Not even a covert allusion to his silence in the matter of the legacy
escaped her. Did the lawyer's artlessly abrupt attempt to change the
subject warn her to be on her guard? In any case, she thanked him with
the readiest courtesy for his kind offer. Might she trouble him in the
meantime to let her see the Will?

She read attentively the concluding words of the c