a new will made since the death of Gervase, no doubt the estate had been charged with an adequate provision for Gervase’s wife; if there had been no will made, his father and he, as the next-of-kin and heir-at-law, would of course take that into their own hands, and secure it at once. Beyond this and the natural legacies, Gerald suspected no new thing. Margaret, on the other hand, had been deeply alarmed and startled by what she heard. She did not remember what she had said on the occasion to which her uncle referred, but she remembered his outburst of cheering, and Osy, with his legs wide apart and his hat waving in his hand, giving forth his hip, hip, hurrah. Was it possible that the old man had made out to himself some fiction of what might be going to happen, some illusion which buoyed him up with false hopes? Was it possible that Patty----? Margaret did not know what to think. She would fain have confided her alarm to Gerald, and taken counsel with him; but those other words of Sir Giles had been too broadly significant, and he was the last person in the world to whom she could talk on any subject that would recall them. She had avoided Gerald, indeed, since that scene, and it had not been referred to again between them. But her mind was full of perplexity and doubt. The bearing of Patty (always _digne_, always just what a daughter-in-law’s chastened grief should be,--not too demonstrative), so confident, so authoritative, so determined to do everything herself, without assistance from an “outsider,” increased this sensation of alarm and uncertainty in Margaret’s mind. She did not know in the least what was coming. But it seemed to her certain that something was coming which was not in the course of nature, or according to the common expectation. Her mind grew more and more confused, yet more and more certain of this as the crisis approached; for Patty never had been so independent, so confident, so sure of being the head of everything, as on the funeral day.