‘Dear! what a brute!’

The junior partner, with his dumpy hands in his pocket, poked his fat face over Mr. Grimston’s shoulder, and peered into the cabinet as the door opened.

The search was not long.  A handsome white paper enclosure, neatly tied up in pink tape, and sealed with large red seals, was inscribed in my dear father’s hand:—­’Will of Austin R. Ruthyn, of Knowl.’  Then, in smaller characters, the date, and in the corner a note—­’This will was drawn from my instructions by Gaunt, Hogg, and Hatchett, Solicitors, Great Woburn Street, London, A.R.R.’

‘Let me have a squint at that indorsement, please, gentlemen,’ half whispered the unpleasant person who represented my uncle Silas.

‘’Tisn’t an indorsement.  There, look—­a memorandum on an envelope,’ said Abel Grimston, gruffly.

‘Thanks—­all right—­that will do,’ he responded, himself making a pencil-note of it, in a long clasp-book which he drew from his coat-pocket.

The tape was carefully cut, and the envelope removed without tearing the writing, and forth came the will, at sight of which my heart swelled and fluttered up to my lips, and then dropped down dead as it seemed into its place.

‘Mr. Grimston, you will please to read it,’ said Doctor Bryerly, who took the direction of the process.  ’I will sit beside you, and as we go along you will be good enough to help us to understand technicalities, and give us a lift where we want it.’  ‘It’s a short will,’ said Mr. Grimston, turning over the sheets ‘very—­considering.  Here’s a codicil.’

‘I did not see that,’ said Doctor Bryerly.

‘Dated only a month ago.’

‘Oh!’ said Doctor Bryerly, putting on his spectacles.  Uncle Silas’s ambassador, sitting close behind, had insinuated his face between Doctor Bryerly’s and the reader’s of the will.

‘On behalf of the surviving brother of the testator,’ interposed the delegate, just as Abel Grimston had cleared his voice to begin, ’I take leave to apply for a copy of this instrument.  It will save a deal of trouble, if the young lady as represents the testator here has no objection.’

‘You can have as many copies as you like when the will is proved,’ said Mr. Grimston.

‘I know that; but supposing as all’s right, where’s the objection?’

‘Just the objection there always is to acting irregular,’ replied Mr. Grimston.

‘You don’t object to act disobliging, it seems.’

‘You can do as I told you,’ replied Mr. Grimston.

‘Thank you for nothing,’ murmured Mr. Sleigh.

And the reading of the will proceeded, while he made elaborate notes of its contents in his capacious pocket-book.

’I, Austin Alymer Ruthyn Ruthyn, being, I thank God, of sound mind and perfect recollection,’ &c, &c.; and then came a bequest of all his estates real, chattels real, copyrights, leases, chattels, money, rights, interests, reversions, powers, plate, pictures, and estates and possessions whatsoever, to four persons—­Lord Ilbury, Mr. Penrose Creswell of Creswell, Sir William Aylmer, Bart., and Hans Emmanuel Bryerly, Doctor of Medicine, ‘to have and to hold,’ &c. &c.  Whereupon my Cousin Monica ejaculated ‘Eh?’ and Doctor Bryerly interposed—­