His reply, dated from a country house some twenty miles distant, announced that he would be at Carsham Hall in three days' time.
On that third day the legal paper that I was to sign arrived by post. It was Sunday morning; I was alone in the schoolroom.
In writing to me, the lawyer had only alluded to "a surviving relative of Sir Gervase, nearly akin to him by blood." The document was more explicit. It described the relative as being a nephew of Sir Gervase, the son of his sister. The name followed.
It was Sextus Cyril Sax.
I have tried on three different sheets of paper to describe the effect which this discovery produced on me--and I have torn them up one after another. When I only think of it, my mind seems to fall back into the helpless surprise and confusion of that time.
After all that had passed between us--the man himself being then on his way to the house! what would he think of me when he saw my name at the bottom of the document? what, in Heaven's name, was Ito do?
How long I sat petrified, with the document on my lap, I never knew. Somebody knocked at the schoolroom door, and looked in and said something, and went out again. Then there was an interval.