“No doubt,” said Richard, “she shut it up in the book it laid on, and put it on the shelf.  But it is all one how it came about.  The will is all correct and duly executed.  One of the witnesses was a clerk, who returned yesterday from South America, where he had been gone for several months.  The other is lying ill at his home in Westchester, but I have sent to-day and had his deposition taken.  It is all in order, and there can be no dispute.”

I think at that moment I should have been glad if it had been found invalid.  There was something so inevitable and final in Richard’s plain and practical words.

Evidently a great change had come in my life, and I could not help it if I would.  I could not but feel the separation from the person upon whom I had leaned so long, and who had done everything for me, and I knew this separation was to be a final one; Richard’s words left no doubt of that.

“What you’d better do,” he said, leaning by the mantelpiece, “is to tell the servants about this—­this—­change in your plans, to-morrow; unpack, and settle the house to stay here for the present.  In the course of a couple of months it will be time enough to make up your mind about where you will live.  I think, till the will is admitted and all that, you had better keep things as they are, and make no change.”

He had been so used to thinking for me, that he could not give it up at once.  “I will tell Sophie to-morrow,” he went on.  “It will not be necessary for you to see her if she should come before she hears of it from me.” (Sophie had an engagement with me to go out on the following morning.  He seemed to to have forgotten nothing.)

“What will Sophie think of me?” I said, with my eyes on the floor.  “Richard, it looks very bad for me; when I was poor, I was going to marry you, and now that I have money left me, I am going to break it off.”

“What difference does it make how it looks,” he said, “when you know you have done right?  I will tell Sophie the truth, that it was my doing both times, and that you only yielded to my judgment in the matter.  Besides, if she judges you harshly, it need not make much matter to you.  You will never again be thrown intimately with her, I suppose.”

“No, I suppose not,” I said faintly.  I was being turned out of my world very fast, and it was not very clear what I was going to get in exchange for it (except freedom).

“I will send you up money to-morrow morning,” he went on, “to pay the servants, and all that.  The clerk I shall send it by, is the one that I shall put in charge of your matters.  You can always draw on him for money, or ask him any questions, or call on him for any service, in case I should be away, or ill, or anything.”

“You are going away?” I said interrogatively.

“It is possible, for a while—­I don’t know.  I haven’t made up my mind definitely about what I am going to do.  But in case I should be away, I mean, you are to call on him.”