He disappeared, leaving a ray of warmth behind him, and Faxon, relieved, lit a cigarette and sat down by the fire.

Looking about with less haste, he was struck by a detail that had escaped him.  The room was full of flowers—­a mere “bachelor’s room,” in the wing of a house opened only for a few days, in the dead middle of a New Hampshire winter!  Flowers were everywhere, not in senseless profusion, but placed with the same conscious art he had remarked in the grouping of the blossoming shrubs that filled the hall.  A vase of arums stood on the writing table, a cluster of strange-hued carnations on the stand at his elbow, and from wide bowls of glass and porcelain clumps of freesia bulbs diffused their melting fragrance.  The fact implied acres of glass —­but that was the least interesting part of it.  The flowers themselves, their quality, selection and arrangement, attested on some one’s part—­and on whose but John Lavington’s?—­a solicitous and sensitive passion for that particular embodiment of beauty.  Well, it simply made the man, as he had appeared to Faxon, all the harder to understand!

The half-hour elapsed, and Faxon, rejoicing at the near prospect of food, set out to make his way to the dining room.  He had not noticed the direction he had followed in going to his room, and was puzzled, when he left it, to find that two staircases, of apparently equal importance, invited him.  He chose the one to his right, and reached, at its foot, a long gallery such as Rainer had described.  The gallery was empty, the doors down its length were closed; but Rainer had said:  “The second to the left,” and Faxon, after pausing for some chance enlightenment which did not come, laid his hand on the second knob to the left.

The room he entered was square, with dusky picture-hung walls.  In its centre, about a table lit by veiled lamps, he fancied Mr. Lavington and his guests to be already seated at dinner; then he perceived that the table was covered not with viands but with papers, and that he had blundered into what seemed to be his host’s study.  As he paused in the irresolution of embarrassment Frank Rainer looked up.

“Oh, here’s Mr. Faxon.  Why not ask him—?”

Mr. Lavington, from the end of the table, reflected his nephew’s smile in a glance of impartial benevolence.

“Certainly.  Come in, Mr. Faxon.  If you won’t think it a liberty—­”

Mr. Grisben, who sat opposite his host, turned his solid head toward the door.  “Of course Mr. Faxon’s an American citizen?”

Frank Rainer laughed.  “That all right! ...  Oh, no, not one of your pin-pointed pens, Uncle Jack!  Haven’t you got a quill somewhere?”

Mr. Balch, who spoke slowly and as if reluctantly, in a muffled voice of which there seemed to be very little left, raised his hand to say:  “One moment:  you acknowledge this to be—?”

“My last will and testament?” Rainer’s laugh redoubled.  “Well, I won’t answer for the ‘last.’  It’s the first one, anyway.”