The Eagle's Shadow

the first footman, you know—and they've never said anything about such a paper. And, then, why should he have made another will just like the first?'

Billy pondered.

By and bye, 'I think I can explain that,' he said, in a rather peculiar voice. 'You see, Hodges and Burton witnessed all his papers, half the time without knowing what they were about. They would hardly have thought of this particular one after his death. And it isn't quite the same will as the other; it leaves you practically everything, but it doesn't appoint any trustees, as the other did, because this will was drawn up after you were of age. Moreover, it contains these four bequests to colleges, to establish a Woods chair of ethnology, which the other will didn't provide for. Of course, it would have been simpler merely to add a codicil to the first will, but Uncle Fred was always very methodical. I—I think he was probably going through the desk the night he died, destroying various papers. 

He must have taken the other will out to destroy it just—just before he died. Perhaps—perhaps—' Billy paused for a little and then laughed, unmirthfully. 'It scarcely matters,' said he. 'Here is the will. It is undoubtedly genuine and undoubtedly the last he made. You'll have to have it probated, Peggy, and settle with the colleges. It— it won't make much of a hole in the Woods millions.'

There was a half-humorous bitterness in his voice that Margaret noted silently. So (she thought) he had hoped for a moment that at the last Frederick R. Woods had relented toward him. It grieved her, in a dull fashion, to see him so mercenary. It grieved her—though she would have denied it emphatically—to see him so disappointed. Since he wanted the money so much, she would have liked for him to have had it, worthless as he was, for the sake of the boy he had been.

'Thank you,' she said, coldly, as she took the paper; 'I will give it to my father. He will do what is necessary. Good-night, Mr. Woods.'

Then she locked up the desk in a businesslike fashion and turned to him, and held out her hand.

'Good-night, Billy,' said this perfectly inconsistent young woman. 

'For a moment I thought Uncle Fred had altered his will in your favour. I almost wish he had.'

Billy smiled a little.

'That would never have done,' he said, gravely, as he shook hands; 'you forget what a sordid, and heartless, and generally good-for-nothing chap I am, Peggy. It's much better as it is.'

Only the tiniest, the flimsiest fiction, her eyes craved of him. Even now, at the eleventh hour, lie to me, Billy Woods, and, oh, how gladly I will believe!

But he merely said 'Good-night, Peggy,' and went out of the room. His broad shoulders had a pathetic droop, a listlessness.

Margaret was glad. Of course, she was glad. At last, she had told him exactly what she thought of him. Why shouldn't she be glad? She was delighted.

So, by way of expressing this delight, she sat down at the desk and began to cry very softly.

XIII

Having duly considered the emptiness of existence, the unworthiness of men, the dreary future that awaited her—though this did not trouble her greatly, as she confidently expected to die soon—and many other such dolorous topics, Miss Hugonin decided to retire for the night.

She rose, filled with speculations as to the paltriness of life and the probability of her eyes being red in the morning.

'It will be all his fault if they are,' she consoled herself. 'Doubtless he'll be very much pleased. After robbing me of all faith in humanity, I dare say the one thing needed to complete his happiness is to make me look like a fright. I hate him! After making me miserable, now, I suppose he'll go off and make some other woman miserable. Oh, of course, he'll make love to the first woman he meets who has any money. I'm sure she's welcome to him. I only pity any woman who has to put up with him. No, I don't,' Margaret decided, after reflection; 'I hate her, too!'

Miss Hugonin went to the door leading to the hallway and paused. 

Then—I grieve to relate it—she shook a little pink-tipped fist in the air.

'I detest you!' she commented, between her teeth; 'oh, how dare you make me feel so ashamed of the way I've treated you!'

The query—as possibly you may have divined—was addressed to Mr. Woods. He was standing by the fireplace in the hallway, and his tall figure was outlined sharply against the flame of the gas-logs that burned there. His shoulders had a pathetic droop, a listlessness.

Billy was reading a paper of some kind by the firelight, and the black outline of his face smiled grimly over it. Then he laughed and threw it into the fire.

'Billy!' a voice observed—a voice that was honey and gold and velvet and all that is most sweet and rich and soft in the world.

Mr. Woods was aware of a light step, a swishing, sibilant, delightful rustling—the caress of sound is the rustling of a well-groomed woman's skirts—and of an afterthought of violets, of a mere reminiscence of orris, all of which came toward him through the dimness of the hall. He started, noticeably.

'Billy,' Miss Hugonin stated, 'I'm sorry for what I said to you. I'm not sure it isn't true, you know, but I'm sorry I said it.'

'Bless your heart!' said Billy; 'don't you worry over that, Peggy. That's all right. Incidentally, the things you've said to me and about me aren't true, of course, but we won't discuss that just now. I—I fancy we're both feeling a bit fagged. Go to bed, Peggy! We'll both go to bed, and the night will bring counsel, and we'll sleep off all unkindliness. Go to bed, little sister!—get all the beauty-sleep you aren't in the least in need of, and dream of how happy you're going to be with the man you love. And—and in the morning I may have something to say to you. Good-night, dear.'

And this time he really went. And when he had come to the bend in the stairs his eyes turned back to hers, slowly and irresistibly, drawn toward them, as it seemed, just as the sunflower is drawn toward the sun, or the needle toward the pole, or, in fine, as the eyes of young gentlemen ordinarily are drawn toward the eyes of the one woman in the world. Then he disappeared.

The mummery of it vexed Margaret. There was no excuse for his looking at her in that way. It irritated her. She was almost as angry with him for doing it as she would have been for not doing it.

Therefore, she bent an angry face toward the fire, her mouth pouting in a rather inviting fashion. Then it rounded slowly into a sanguine O, which of itself suggested osculation, but in reality stood for 'observe!' For the paper Billy had thrown into the fire had fallen under the gas-logs, and she remembered his guilty start.

'After all,' said Margaret, 'it's none of my business.'

So she eyed it wistfully.

'It may be important,' she considerately remembered. 'It ought not to be left there.'

So she fished it out with a big paper-cutter.

'But it can't be very important,' she dissented afterward, 'or he wouldn't have thrown it away.'

So she looked at the superscripture on the back of it.

Then she gave a little gasp and tore it open and read it by the firelight.

Miss Hugonin subsequently took credit to herself for not going into hysterics. And I think she had some reason to; for she found the paper a duplicate of the one Billy had taken out of the secret drawer, with his name set in the place of hers. At the last Frederick R. Woods had relented toward his nephew.

Margaret laughed a little; then she cried a little; then she did both together. Afterward she sat in the firelight, very puzzled and very excited and very penitent and very beautiful, and was happier than she had ever been in her life.

'He had it in his pocket,' her dear voice quavered; 'he had it in his pocket, my brave, strong, beautiful Billy did, when he asked me to marry him. It was King Cophetua wooing the beggar-maid—and the beggar was an impudent, ungrateful, idiotic little piece!' Margaret hissed, in her most shrewish manner. 'She ought to be spanked. She ought to go down on her knees to him in sackcloth, and tears, and ashes, and all