But no one spoke for a full minute after the doctor joined them; they stood about in the much gilded, brightly decorated room, in the outer portion outside that part which Katherine had separated for herself. Her table, with its vase of flowers, her piano, the low chair in which she usually sat, were just visible within the screen. The dark figures of the men encumbered the foreground between the second fireplace and the row of long windows opening to the ground. Mr. Sturgeon stood against one of these in profile, looking more than ever like some strange bird, with his projecting spectacles and long neck and straggling beard and hair. “You sent for me, I was told,” Dr. Burnet said. “Ah, yes, yes.” Mr. Sturgeon turned round. He threw himself into one of the gilded chairs. There could not have been a more inappropriate scene for such an assembly. “We would like you to give us a little account of your patient’s state, doctor,” he said, “if you will be so good. I don’t mean technically, of course. I should like to know about the state of his mind. Was he himself? Did he know what he was doing? Would you have said he was able to take a clear view of his position, and to understand his own intentions and how to carry them out?” “Do you mean to ask me if Mr. Tredgold was in full possession of his faculties? Perfectly, I should say, and almost to the last hour.” “Did he ever confide in you as to his intentions for the future, Doctor? I mean about his property, what he meant to do with it? A man often tells his doctor things he will tell to no one else. He was very angry with his daughter, the young lady who ran away, we know. He mentioned to you, perhaps, that he meant to disinherit her--to leave everything to her sister?” “My poor brother,” cried Bob Tredgold, introducing himself to Dr. Burnet with a wave of his hand, “I’m his only brother, sir--swore always as he’d well provide for me.” Dr. Burnet felt himself offended by the question; he had the instinctive feeling so common in a man who moves in a limited local circle that all his own affairs were perfectly known, and that the expectations he had once formed, and the abrupt conclusion to which they had come, were alluded to in this quite uncalled for examination. “Mr. Tredgold never spoke to me of his private affairs,” he said sharply. “I had nothing to do with his money or how he meant to leave it. The question was one of no interest to me.” “But, surely,” said the lawyer, “you must in the course of so long an illness have heard him refer to it, make some remark on the subject--a doctor often asks, if nothing more, whether the business affairs are all in order, whether there might be something a man would wish to have looked to.” “Mr. Tredgold was a man of business, which I am not. He knew what was necessary much better than I did. I never spoke to him on business matters, nor he to me.”