The lawyer, lowering his eyes to hide their own suspicious glint, opened the paper, and carefully read these lines: 

“Forgive.  My troubles are too much for me.  I’m going to a place of rest, the only place and the only rest possible to one in my position.  I don’t blame anybody.  Least of all do I blame Anitra.  It was not her fault that she was brought up rudely, or that she knows no restraint in love or in hate.  Be kind to her for my sake, and if any one else claims her or offers to take her from you, resist them.  I give her entirely to you.  It’s a more priceless gift than you think; much more priceless than the one which I take from you by my death.  I could never have been happy with you; you could never have been happy with me.  Fate stood between us; a darker and more inexorable fate than you, in your kindly experience of life, could imagine.  Else, why do I plunge to my death with your ring on my finger and your love in my heart?

  “Georgian.”

“Ravings?” questioned Ransom hoarsely, as Mr. Harper’s eyes rose again to his face.

“It would seem so,” assented the lawyer.  “Yet there is intelligence in all the lines.  And the will—­read the will.  There is no lack of intelligent purpose there; little as it accords with the feeling she exhibits here for her sister.  She leaves her nothing; and does not even mention her name.  Her personal belongings she bequeaths to you; but her realty, which comprises the bulk of her property I believe, she divides, somewhat unequally I own, between you and a man named Auchincloss.  It is he I want to ask you about.  Have you ever heard her speak of him?”

“Josiah Auchincloss of St. Louis, Missouri,” read Mr. Ransom.  “No, the name is new to me.  Didn’t she tell you anything about him when she gave you her instructions?”

“Not a word.  She said, ’You will hear from him if ever this will is published.  He has a right to the money and I entreat you to show your respect for me by seeing that he gets it without any unnecessary trouble.’  That was all she said or would say.  Your wife was a woman of powerful character, Mr. Ransom.  My little arts counted for nothing in any difference of opinion between us.”

“Auchincloss!” repeated Ransom.  “Another unknown quantity in the problem of my poor girl’s life.  What a tangle!  Do you wonder that I am overcome by it?  Anitra—­the so-called brother—­and now this Auchincloss!”

“Right, Ransom, I share your confusion.”

“Do you?” The words came very slowly, penetratingly.  “Haven’t you some idea—­some strange, possibly half-formed notion or secret intuition which might afford some clew to this labyrinth?  I have been told that lawyers have a knack of getting at the bottom of human conduct and affairs.  You have had a wide experience; does it not suggest some answer to this problem which will harmonize all its discordant elements and make clear its various complications?”