The Wall Between Part 35

"No, sir."

The lawyer straightened himself. Matters were becoming interesting.

"There was a second will," he declared with deliberation. "It was drawn up one morning in your aunt's room, with Miss Melvina Grey, Mr. Caleb Saunders, and the boy Tony as witnesses."

Lucy waited breathlessly.

"This will," went on Mr. Benton, "provides for quite a different disposition of the property. I must beg you to prepare yourself for a disappointment."

The girl threw back her head.

"Go on, please," she commanded.

"Quite a different disposition of the property," repeated Mr. Benton, dwelling on the cadence of the phrase.

"What is it?"

The man delayed.

"Have you any reason to suppose, Miss Webster, that your aunt was--shall we say annoyed, with you?"

"I knew she did not like the way I felt about some things," admitted Lucy.

"But did not some vital difference of opinion arise between you recently?"

Mr. Benton persisted.

"I spoke my mind to Aunt Ellen the other day," confessed the girl. "I had to."

"Ah! Then that explains matters!"

"What matters?"

"The somewhat strange conditions of the will."

Having untangled the enigma to his own satisfaction, Mr. Benton proceeded to sit back and enjoy its solution all by himself.

"Can't you tell me what they are?" Lucy at last inquired impatiently.

"I can enlighten you, yes. In fact, it is my duty to do so."

Rising, he went to the desk drawer and made a pretense of fumbling through his papers; but it was easy to see that the doc.u.ment he sought had been carefully placed on the top of the spa.r.s.e, untidy pile that cluttered the interior of the rickety piece of furniture.

"Perhaps," he remarked, "there is no real need to burden your mind with legal formalities; nevertheless----"

"Oh, don't bother to read me the whole will," broke out Lucy sharply.

"Just tell me in plain terms what Aunt Ellen has done."

It was obvious that Mr. Benton did not at all relish the off-handedness of the request.

He depended not a little on his professional pomposity to bolster up a certain lack of confidence in himself, and stripped of this legal regalia he shriveled to a very ordinary person indeed.

"Your aunt," he began in quite a different tone, "has left her property to Mr. Martin Howe."

Lucy recoiled.

"To whom?"

"To Martin Howe."

There was an oppressive pause.

"To Martin Howe?" the girl stammered at length. "But there must be some mistake."

Mr. Benton met her gaze kindly.

"I fear there is no mistake, my dear young lady," he said.

"Oh, I don't mean because my aunt has cut me off," Lucy explained with pride. "She of course had a right to do what she pleased. But to leave the property to Martin Howe! Why, she would scarcely speak to him."

"So I have gathered," the lawyer said. "That is what makes the will so remarkable."

"It is preposterous! Martin will never accept it in the world."

"That contingency is also provided for," put in Mr. Benton.

"How?"

"The property is willed to the legatee--house, land, and money--to be personally occupied by said beneficiary and not sold, deeded, or given away on the conditions--a very unusual condition this second one----"

Again Mr. Benton stopped, his thumbs and finger neatly pyramided into a miniature squirrel cage, over the top of which he regarded his client meditatively. His reverie appeared to be intensely interesting.

"Very unusual indeed," he presently concluded absently.

"Well?" demanded Lucy.

"Ah, yes, Miss Webster," he continued, starting at the interrogation. "As I was saying, the conditions made by the deceased are unusual--peculiar, in fact, if I may be permitted to say so. The property goes to Mr. Martin Howe on the condition that in six months' time he personally rebuilds the wall lying between the Howe and Webster estates and now in a state of dilapidation."

"He will never do it," burst out Lucy indignantly, springing to her feet.

"In that case the property goes unreservedly to the town of Sefton Falls,"

went on Mr. Benton in an even tone, "to be used as a home for the dest.i.tute of the county."

The girl clinched her hands. It was a trap,--a last, revengeful, defiant act of hatred.

The pity that any one should go down into the grave with such bitterness of heart was the girl's first thought.

Then the cleverness of the old woman's plot began to seep into her mind.

All unwittingly Martin Howe was made a party in a diabolical scheme to defraud her--the woman who loved him--of her birthright, of the home that should have been hers.

The only way he could restore to her what was her own was to marry her, and to do that he must perform the one deed he had pledged himself never to be tempted into: he must rebuild the wall. Otherwise the property would pa.s.s into other hands.