’I don’t think I can, for I promised to give the key to Dr. Bryerly, and the meaning was that he only should open it.’

Cousin Monica uttered an inarticulate ‘H’m!’ of surprise or disapprobation.

‘Has he been written to?’

‘No, I do not know his address.’

‘Not know his address! come, that is curious,’ said Knollys, a little testily.

I could not—­no one now living in the house could furnish even a conjecture.  There was even a dispute as to which train he had gone by—­north or south—­they crossed the station at an interval of five minutes.  If Dr. Bryerly had been an evil spirit, evoked by a secret incantation, there could not have been more complete darkness as to the immediate process of his approach.

’And how long do you mean to wait, my dear?  No matter; at all events you may open the desk; you may find papers to direct you—­you may find Dr. Bryerly’s address—­you may find, heaven knows what.’

So down we went—­I assenting—­and we opened the desk.  How dreadful the desecration seems—­all privacy abrogated—­the shocking compensation for the silence of death!

Henceforward all is circumstantial evidence—­all conjectural—­except the litera scripta, and to this evidence every note-book, and every scrap of paper and private letter, must contribute—­ransacked, bare in the light of day—­what it can.

At the top of the desk lay two notes sealed, one to Cousin Monica, the other to me.  Mine was a gentle and loving little farewell—­nothing more—­which opened afresh the fountains of my sorrow, and I cried and sobbed over it bitterly and long.  The other was for ‘Lady Knollys.’  I did not see how she received it, for I was already absorbed in mine.  But in awhile she came and kissed me in her girlish, goodnatured way.  Her eyes used to fill with tears at sight of my paroxysms of grief.  Then she would begin, ‘I remember it was a saying of his,’ and so she would repeat it—­something maybe wise, maybe playful, at all events consolatory—­and the circumstances in which she had heard him say it, and then would follow the recollections suggested by these; and so I was stolen away half by him, and half by Cousin Monica, from my despair and lamentation.

Along with these lay a large envelope, inscribed with the words ’Directions to be complied with immediately on my death.’  One of which was, ’Let the event be forthwith published in the county and principal London papers.’  This step had been already taken.  We found no record of Dr. Bryerly’s address.

We made search everywhere, except in the cabinet, which I would on no account permit to be opened except, according to his direction, by Dr. Bryerly’s hand.  But nowhere was a will, or any document resembling one, to be found.  I had now, therefore, no doubt that his will was placed in the cabinet.

In the search among my dear father’s papers we found two sheafs of letters, neatly tied up and labelled—­these were from my uncle Silas.