"Yet the facts point that way and Mr. Jeffrey accepts the suicide
theory without question."

"Ah,, Mr. Jeffrey is there!"

"Most certainly; he was sent for at once."

"And Miss Tuttle? She came with him of course?"

"She came, but not with him. She is very fond of her sister."

"I must go over at once," he cried, leaping again to his feet and
looking about for his hat. "It is my duty to make them feel at
home; in short, to - to put the house at their disposal." Here he
found his hat and placed it on his head. "The property is mine now,
you know," he politely explained, turning, with a keen light in his
gray eye, full upon me and overwhelming me with the grand air of a
man who has come unexpectedly into his own. "Mrs. Jeffrey's father
was my younger brother - the story is an old and long one - and the
property, which in all justice should have been divided between us,
went entirely to him. But he was a good fellow in the main and saw
the injustice of his father's will as clearly as I did, and years
ago made one on his own account bequeathing me the whole estate in
case he left no issue, or that issue died. Veronica was his only
child; Veronica has died; therefore the old house is mine and all
that goes with it, all that goes with it."

There was the miser's gloating in this repetition of a phrase
sufficiently expressive in itself, or rather the gloating of a man
who sees himself suddenly rich after a life of poverty. There was