She tried to pull
herself together; put down the candle hurriedly and, feeling the
leathern dryness in her mouth, caught at a carafe of water, drinking
from it without use of the glass.
That steadied her. Thoughts drifted back into their channels and,
coming with them, looming with its portentous realization above the
others, the remembrance that only the evening before, he had drawn
out the settlement upon her life. Now she knew why he had done it.
Now she found the absolute trending of his mind. He had said if he
died! That was only to blind, only to tie a bandage about her eyes
in order to conceal from her the true motive that had instigated him.
But she saw the true motive now. Under the bandages she had already
tried to peer; now circumstance itself had wrenched them from her.
With feverish movements, she opened a drawer and took from it a little
slip of paper. This was a copy of the settlement as he had drawn it
out. He had presented it to her.
"You'd better keep it as a memorandum of the details," he had said
and, without glancing at its contents, she had thrust it into this
drawer. Now she hurriedly spread it open.
"In the event of my death, or the discontinuance of the relations
which now exist between Miss Sally Bishop and myself--"
These were the first words that met her eyes.
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