The first and longer sheet was done.  Felicia, sitting on the edge of a stiff chair, her small feet dangling, was staring at the lawyer.  Victoria was looking at her son bewildered.  Boden wore an odd sort of smile.  Undershaw, impassive, was playing with his watch-chain.  Lydia radiant and erect, in a dress of gray-blue tweed, a veil of the same tint falling back from the harmonious fairness of her face, had her eyes on Felicia.  There was a melting kindness in the eyes—­as though the maternity deep in the girl’s nature spoke.

A deed of gift, inter vivos, conveying the whole personality and real estate, recently bequeathed to Claude Faversham by Edmund Melrose, consisting of so-and-so, and so-and-so,—­a long catalogue of shares and land which had taken some time to read—­to Felicia Melrose, daughter of the late Edmund Melrose, subject only to an annuity to her mother, Antonetta Melrose, of L2,000 a year, to a pension for Thomas Dixon and his wife, and various other pensions and small annuities; Henry, Earl Tatham, and Victoria, Countess Tatham, appointed trustees, and to act as guardians, till the said Felicia Melrose should attain the age of twenty-four; no mention of any other person at all; the whole vast property, precisely as it had passed from Melrose to Faversham, just taken up and dropped in the lap of this little creature with the dangling feet without reservation, or deduction—­now that it was done, and not merely guessed at, it showed plain for what in truth it was—­one of those acts wherein the energies of the human spirit, working behind the material veil, swing for a moment into view, arresting and stunning the spectator.

“But the collections!” said Tatham, remembering them almost with relief, speaking in his mother’s ear; “what about the collections?”

“We come now to the second part of the deed of gift,” said the silvery voice of the lawyer.  And again the astounded circle set itself to listen.

“The collections of works of art now contained in Threlfall Tower, I also convey in full property and immediate possession to the said Felicia Melrose, but on the following conditions: 

“Threlfall Tower, or such portions of it as may be necessary, to be maintained permanently as a museum in which to house the said collection:  a proper museum staff to be appointed; a sum of money, to be agreed upon between Claude Faversham and Felicia Melrose, to be set aside for the maintenance of the building, the expenses of installation, and the endowment of the staff; and a set of rooms in the west wing to be appropriated to the private residence of a curator, who is to be appointed, after the first curatorship, by—­”

Certain public officials were named, and a few other stipulations made.  Then with a couple of legal phrases and a witnessed signature, the second sheet came to an end.

There was a silence that could be heard.  In the midst of it Faversham rose.  He was agitated and a little incoherent.