“On her death-bed she made me promise to give you my hand.  There it is.”

His hand was propelled out, caught flying by Bartley, released, and drawn back again, all by machinery it seemed.

“She leaves you L20,000 in trust for the benefit of her child and yours—­Mary Bartley.”

“Poor, dear Eliza.”

The Colonel looked as less high-bred people do when they say “Gammon,” but proceeded civilly though brusquely.

“In dealing with the funds you have a large discretion.  Should the girl die before you, or unmarried, the money lapses to your nephew, my son, Walter Clifford.  He is a scapegrace, and has run away from me; but I must protect his just interests.  So as a mere matter of form I will ask you whether Mary Bartley is alive.”

Bartley bowed his head.

Colonel Clifford had not heard she was ill, so he continued:  “In that case”—­and then, interrupting himself for a moment, turned away to Bartley’s private table, and there emptied his pockets of certain documents, one of which he wanted to select.

His back was not turned more than half a minute, yet a most expressive pantomime took place in that short interval.

The nurse opened a door of communication, and stood with a rush at the threshold:  indeed, she would have rushed in but for the stranger.  She was very pale, and threw up her hands to Bartley.  Her face and her gesture were more expressive than words.

Then Bartley, clinging by mere desperate instinct to money he could not hope to keep, flew to her, drove her out by a frenzied movement of both hands, though he did not touch her, and spread-eagled himself before the door, with his face and dilating eyes turned toward Colonel Clifford.

The Colonel turned and stepped toward him with the document he had selected at the table.  Bartley went to meet him.

The Colonel gave it to him, and said it was a copy of the will.

Bartley took it, and Colonel Clifford expelled his last sentences.

“We have shaken hands.  Let us forget our past quarrels, and respect the wishes of the dead.”

With that he turned sharply on both heels, and faced the door of the little office before he moved; then marched out in about seven steps, as he had marched in, and never looked behind him for two hundred miles.

The moment he was out of sight, Bartley, with his wife’s will in his hand and ice at his heart, went to his child’s room.  The nurse met him, crying, and said, “A change”—­mild but fatal words that from a nurse’s lips end hope.

He came to the bedside just in time to see the breath hovering on his child’s lips, and then move them as the summer air stirs a leaf.

Soon all was still, and the rich man’s child was clay.

The unhappy father burst into a passion of grief, short but violent.  Then he ordered the nurse to watch there, and let no one enter the room; then he staggered back to his office, and flung himself down at his table and buried his head.  To do him justice, he was all parental grief at first, for his child was his idol.