d-up, legal-looking document, tied and sealed and covered with
dust.

"I know it's the will. I'm right, I'm right!" she cried, joyfully. "She
is _the_ Jeanette--but, oh, how the plot thickens----"

"What have you found?" said a soft voice behind her, and she turned to
confront Jeanette, who was smiling and curious.

"Look!" said Lucile, waving the document wildly. "The door just opened--I
don't know how; my elbow must have touched a spring--and this thing was
in it--the opening, I mean, not the door."

"But what is it?" asked Jeanette, puzzled. "I have not the remembrance of
having looked at it before."

"Then you don't know?" said Lucile, wide eyed.

The girl shook her head, eyeing the document with a puzzled expression.
Gradually bewilderment changed to surprise, surprise to incredulity.

"It's the will!" she cried. "The will of Henri Charloix! Oh, it cannot be
so; it can't--you say you found it in here?" she questioned, and, without
waiting for an answer, plunged her hand into the opening, while Lucile
drew nearer to her.

"May I look?" she asked, and the girl nodded, turning luminous eyes upon
the pretty, awed face at her shoulder. "You may prove to be the best
friend I have ever yet known," she said, solemnly, and drew from the
secret hiding-place a very ordinary tin box, with a scrap of writing
bound to it with a coarse cord.

The wording was in French, but Jeanette, translating for her benefit,
read: "To be opened by my little daughter Jeanette on the event of her
twenty-first birthday. Signed, EDOUARD RENARD."

"It is from my father!" cried Jeanette, sinking down, all white and
trembling, upon a worn old couch and clasping the precious box to her as
though she could not let it go. "Father! father!" she cried, and, bending
her head upon her arms, sobbed as though her heart would break.

Lucile turned and tiptoed from the room, thinking she had intruded long
enough; but a soft call from Jeanette made her pause. She seated herself
on the stairs and waited.

To Lucile's tingling consciousness that short wait seemed an eternity.
Her head ached with the flood of imagination that besieged it, her two
hands grasped the banister to keep her rooted to the spot, while her feet
tapped an impatient tattoo on the floor.

At last the longed-for summons came.

"Lucile," called a low, unsteady voice, "will you come to me?"

Would she come? Lucile flew up the winding stairs and came to a
standstill before Jeanet