“She’s coming,” said he, striving to hide his extreme emotion.  “I heard her voice in the hall beyond.”

Hazen sprang to the door which Ransom had carefully closed, and was about to fall on his knees before the keyhole when he suddenly stiffened himself and, turning towards the lawyer, cried with a new strain of loftiness in his tone: 

“You.  You shall do the looking, only promise to be very minute in your description of her behavior.  It’s a great trust I repose in you.  See that you honor it.”

The revulsion of feeling caused in the lawyer by this show of confidence was not perceptible.  But it softened his step as well as his manner as he crossed to do the other’s bidding.

The remaining two stood at his side breathless, waiting for his first word.

It came in a whisper: 

“She’s approaching her room.  She looks tired.  Her eyes are stealing this way;—­no, they are resting on her own door.  She sees the sign.  She stands staring at it, but not like a person who has ever seen it before.  It’s the stare of an uneducated woman who runs upon something she does not understand.  Now she touches it with one finger and glances up and down the hall with a doubtful shake of the head.  Now she is running to another door, now to another.  She is looking to see if this scrawl is to be found anywhere else; she even casts her eye this way—­I feel like leaving my post.  If I do, you may know that she’s coming—­No, she’s back at her own door and—­gentlemen, her bringing up or rather coming up asserts itself.  She has put her palm to her mouth and is vigorously rubbing off the marks.”

The next instant Mr. Harper rose.  “She’s gone into her room,” said he.  “Listen and you will hear her key click in the lock.”

Ransom sank into a seat; Hazen had walked to the window.  Presently he turned.

“I am convinced,” said he.  “I will not trouble you gentlemen further.  Mr. Ransom, I condole with you upon your loss.  My sister was a woman of uncommon gifts.”

Mr. Ransom bowed.  He had no words for this man at a moment of such extreme excitement.  He did not even note the latent sting hidden in the other’s seeming tribute to Georgian.  But the lawyer did and Hazen perceived that he did, for pausing in his act of crossing the room, he leaned for a moment on the table with his eyes down, then quickly raising them remarked to that gentleman: 

“I am going to leave by the midnight train for New York.  To-morrow I shall be on the ocean.  Will it be transgressing all rules of propriety for me to ask the purport of my sister’s will?  It is a serious matter to me, sir.  If she has left me anything—­”

“She has not,” emphasized the lawyer.

A shadow darkened the disappointed man’s brow.  His wound swelled and his eyes gleamed ironically as he turned them upon Ransom.

Instantly that gentleman spoke.

“I have received but a moiety,” said he.  “You need not envy me the amount.”