Wych Hazel was silent a moment, as if thinking.

’What was the exact wording of the will, Mrs. Coles?  Do you remember?’

’Wording?  I don’t know about wording, the lawyers curl their words round so, and plait them together; but the sense I know well enough; the terms of the will.  It made a great impression upon me; and then seeing Dane for so many years, and knowing all about it, I couldn’t forget it.  This was the way of it.  You know your father, and your mother, and Dane’s father were immense friends?’

She paused, but Wych Hazel gave her no help.

’So they struck up this plan between them, when Mr. Kennedy knew he was ill and wouldn’t ever be well again, and that his wife would not long outlive him.  You were put under that old gentleman’s guardianship,—­I forget his name at this minute, but you know it well enough,—­Mr. Falkirk! that was it.  You were to be under Mr. Falkirk’s guardianship, and Dane was to be the ward of my father; and so it was, you know.  But when he arrived at the age of twenty-five, upon making certain declarations formally, before the proper persons, Dane, the will appointed, should be joint guardian with Mr. Falkirk, and look after you himself.’

Mrs. Coles paused and surveyed her auditor; indeed she had been doing that all along.  And perhaps people of her sort are moved from first to last by a feeling akin to that which possessed the old Roman world, when men were put to painful deaths at public and private shows to gratify a critical curiosity which observed how they conquered pain or succumbed under it.  Mrs. Coles paused.

‘But I haven’t told you,’ she went on with a look as sharp as a needle, ’I haven’t told you yet the substance of the declaration Dane was to make, to enable him to take his position.  He was to declare, that it was his wish and purpose to make you his wife.  Upon that understanding, with the approbation of Mr. Falkirk and my father, the thing was all to be fixed, as I told you.  Then you would be between two guardians.  And if you, up to the age of twenty-five, married any one else, against their joint consent, your lands and properties were to pass away from you to him, except a certain provision settled upon you for life.  And,’ said Mrs. Coles, with another chuckle, ‘I wanted to know how it feels.’

Had an arrow or a bullet gone through her? or was it only the hot iron burning in those words?  Hazel did not know.  The one coherent thought in the girl’s mind, was that a dying standard-bearer will sometimes bring away his colours.  She brought off hers.

‘I see but two mistakes,’ she said, forcing herself to speak slowly, clearly.  ’But I daresay either Mr. Rollo or Mr. Falkirk can point them out, any time.  I must go.  Good afternoon.’

She was gone—­Mrs. Coles hardly knew by which way.  The next minute Dr. Maryland’s study door that looked on the garden swung back, and Wych Hazel stood by his side.  Outside were Lewis and Jeannie Deans.  Her eyes were in a glitter,—­the Doctor could see nothing else.