"I believe it; I know it; I remember now that they have always shown an
interest in the matter. Hermione wanted to read the will, and--Edgar,
Edgar, can they be the heirs for whom we are searching, and is that why
Huckins haunts the house and is received by them in plain defiance of my
entreaties?"
"If they are the heirs they would have been likely to have told you.
Penniless young girls are not usually backward in claiming property
which is their due."
"That is certainly true, but this property has been left under a
condition. I recollect now how disappointed Hermione looked when she
read the will. Give me the book; I must see her sister or herself at
once about it." And without heeding the demurs of his more cautious
friend, Frank plunged from the house and made his way immediately to the
Cavanagh mansion.
His hasty knock brought Emma to the door. As he encountered her look and
beheld the sudden and strong agitation under which she labored, he
realized for the first time that he was returning to the house before
reading the letter upon which so much depended.
But he was so filled with his new discovery that he gave that idea but a
thought.
"Miss Cavanagh--Emma," he entreated, "grant me a moment's conversation.
I have just found this book in Dr. Sellick's library--a book which he
declares was once given him by your sister--and in it----"
They had entered the parlor by this time and were standing by a table
upon which burned a lamp----"is a name."
She started, and was bending to look at the words upon which his finger
rested, when the door opened. Hermione, alarmed and not knowing what to
think of this unexpected return of her lover so soon, as she supposed,
after the receipt of her letter, had come down from her room in that
mood of extreme tension which is induced by an almost unendurable
suspense.
Frank, who in all his experience of her had never seen her look as she
did at this moment, fell back from the place where he stood and hastily
shook his head.
"Don't look like that," he cried, "or you will make me feel I can never
read your letter."
"And have you not read it?" she demanded, shrinking in her turn till she
stood on the threshold by which she had entered. "Why then are you here?
What could have brought you back so soon when you knew----"
"This," he interpolated hastily, holding up the book which he had let
fall on the table at her entrance. "See! the name of Harriett Smith is
written in it. Tell me, I pray, why you kept from me so persistently the
fact that you knew the person to whom the property I hold in trust
rightfully belongs."
The two girls with a quick glance at each other drooped their heads.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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