e could attach to so imperious a lady) and
briefly announcing my absence to Mark Jedfrey, I sought the Drainger
residence.

The old house looked as deathlike as ever. It seemed incredible that
human existence could be possible within its sunless walls. Indeed, my
persistent efforts at the rusty bell-handle produced only a feeble echo,
and the round-eyed interest of a group of urchins, who volunteered,
after a time, that nobody lived there. I was beginning to agree with
them when a key was turned in the lock and the weatherbeaten door
yielded a few cautious inches. Miss Emily looked out at me.

"It's you," she said ungraciously, and seemed rather to hope that I
would disappear as at the uttering of a charm.

"I wish to see your mother," I said.

She hesitated. At length, opening the door scarcely enough to admit me,
she bade me enter, and disappeared. The house was as dismal as ever.

"Come in here," she said, appearing after her usual sudden fashion in a
dim doorway and looking more like a wraith than ever.

Her eyes burned me as I walked cautiously into the other room.

It was one I had not seen, but Mrs. Drainger was seated, as before, in
the obscurest corner, a blur of white in which her pale hands looked
like pallid lumps of flame. I faced my invisible client.

"I have come about the will," I began, and was immediately conscious of
Miss Emily's voracious interest. The opening was, as I recognized too
late, scarcely diplomatic.

"Will?" said the daughter in a harsh voice. "You are making a will?
You--you----"

She looked enormously tall and unpleasant as she spoke.

"Yes, my dear," responded Mrs. Drainger dryly.

"You? _You_?" continued the daughter rapidly. "After all these years? It
is incredible. It is incredible." She laughed unpleasantly with closed
eyes.

Then, conscious that she was betraying emotions not meant for me, she
turned to my chair. "You will understand that the information is
something of a shock for a daughter. My mother's condition----"

"Mrs. Drainger," I ventured to interrupt, "wishes merely to make certain
changes in an instrument already drawn up." I was conscious of a stir,
whether of gratitude or of resentment, from the darkened corner.

Emily seemed momentarily bewildered.

"You frightened me," she said at length with a frankness palpably false.

"I quite understand," I retorted, the sham being, I thought, tolerably
obvious. "And now if your mother and I----"

She took