s
legitimate heirs. For three days he had lain without speaking a word,
and Rachel could only guess his wants by mute signs. During all this
time her thoughts had scarcely glanced at Walter. He seemed anxious
about the condition of his uncle, calling repeatedly at the bedroom
door, and going away without entering. But his manner indicated no
affection, if it did not rather seem that he considered the old man had
done his worst against him, and that sorrow was not due from one he had
disinherited. Her affections were too much engrossed by her patient to
permit her thinking of what was being transacted in the outside world.
Yet, when she looked upon the face of the invalid, so pale and
motionless, where so long the shades of grief and the lights of joy had
chased each other, by the old decree of human destiny, the words of Paul
would occur to her. Was the death that was there impending the result of
a more necessary law than that which had ruled every other condition of
body or mind which had ever been experienced by the patient sufferer?
Then there came the question, Could Walter Grierson so regulate his
heart as to force it to love her in preference to Agnes Ainslie? Could
she, Rachel herself, so rule her feelings as to cease loving the man she
still suspected of falsehood and treachery? It was even while she was
thus ruminating over thoughts that made her tremble, that she observed,
on the third night, a change in her patient. He seemed to start by the
advent of some recollection. His body became restless, and he waved his
hand wildly, as if he wanted her to bend over him, to hear what he might
struggle to say. She immediately obeyed the sign. He fixed his eyes upon
her, made efforts to articulate, which resulted only in a thick, broken
gibberish. She could only catch one or two indistinct words, from which
it seemed that he wished to tell her _where she would find the will_;
but the precise phrase whereby he wished to indicate the deposit was
pronounced in such an imperfect manner that she could not make it out.
Strangely enough, yet still consistently with the generosity of her
character, she did not like to pain him by indicating that she did not
understand him. Nay, she nodded pleasantly, as if she wanted him to be
easy, under the satisfaction that he had succeeded in his efforts to
articulate. Yet so far was she from thinking of the importance of the
communication to herself, that she flattered him into the belief t