“It’s a mere formula,” Mr. Balch explained.

“Well, here goes.”  Rainer dipped his quill in the inkstand his uncle had pushed in his direction, and dashed a gallant signature across the document.

Faxon, understanding what was expected of him, and conjecturing that the young man was signing his will on the attainment of his majority, had placed himself behind Mr. Grisben, and stood awaiting his turn to affix his name to the instrument.  Rainer, having signed, was about to push the paper across the table to Mr. Balch; but the latter, again raising his hand, said in his sad imprisoned voice:  “The seal—?”

“Oh, does there have to be a seal?”

Faxon, looking over Mr. Grisben at John Lavington, saw a faint frown between his impassive eyes.  “Really, Frank!” He seemed, Faxon thought, slightly irritated by his nephew’s frivolity.

“Who’s got a seal?” Frank Rainer continued, glancing about the table.  “There doesn’t seem to be one here.”

Mr. Grisben interposed.  “A wafer will do.  Lavington, you have a wafer?”

Mr. Lavington had recovered his serenity.  “There must be some in one of the drawers.  But I’m ashamed to say I don’t know where my secretary keeps these things.  He ought, of course, to have seen to it that a wafer was sent with the document.”

“Oh, hang it—­” Frank Rainer pushed the paper aside:  “It’s the hand of God—­and I’m hungry as a wolf.  Let’s dine first, Uncle Jack.”

“I think I’ve a seal upstairs,” said Faxon suddenly.

Mr. Lavington sent him a barely perceptible smile.  “So sorry to give you the trouble—­”

“Oh, I say, don’t send him after it now.  Let’s wait till after dinner!”

Mr. Lavington continued to smile on his guest, and the latter, as if under the faint coercion of the smile, turned from the room and ran upstairs.  Having taken the seal from his writing-case he came down again, and once more opened the door of the study.  No one was speaking when he entered—­they were evidently awaiting his return with the mute impatience of hunger, and he put the seal in Rainer’s reach, and stood watching while Mr. Grisben struck a match and held it to one of the candles flanking the inkstand.  As the wax descended on the paper Faxon remarked again the singular emaciation, the premature physical weariness, of the hand that held it:  he wondered if Mr. Lavington had ever noticed his nephew’s hand, and if it were not poignantly visible to him now.

With this thought in his mind, Faxon raised his eyes to look at Mr. Lavington.  The great man’s gaze rested on Frank Rainer with an expression of untroubled benevolence; and at the same instant Faxon’s attention was attracted by the presence in the room of another person, who must have joined the group while he was upstairs searching for the seal.  The new-comer was a man of about Mr. Lavington’s age and figure, who stood directly behind his chair, and who, at the moment when Faxon first saw him, was