Therefore, when at last we looked at each other in the hall in one of those moments when, at the end of a task, a mental inventory is taken to be sure that all is done, I was surprised to see her expression change suddenly, to hear a cry of dismay escape her, and to observe her trundle herself toward the library door in grotesque haste.
When, following her, I went into the room, I found her thick fingers pulling open drawer after drawer of the desk, and turning over the papers they contained.
"It was here, Mr. Estabrook. Oh, my God! Mr. Estabrook, I saw him put it here!" she cried.
"What?" I asked, with a glimmer of memory.
"The papers. They was marked for her, but she mustn't ever have 'em! I'd rather they should pluck me from my bones, sir! And I saw him put 'em here!"
"He took them out again," I cried, touched by her contagious fear. "He died with them on the floor beside him. I know what you mean. The blue seal."
"Yes, the blue seal!" she cried in recognition, and stumbling across the room she fell upon her knees, reaching under the old easy-chair and the desk, patting over the rug with her hand, turning up its corners, searching with her face bent down, like a devotee of some strange sect, muttering to herself.
"She must never see," she exclaimed monotonously. "Poor child, she must never see. It is worse than death--a hundred times. Oh, what has he done with that terrible package!"
Suddenly, throwing herself upward and backward, until the upper half of her body was erect, and with a small object held up to my astonished eyes between her forefinger and thumb, she uttered a cry of despair and rage. She had found a piece of the sealing wax with which the packet, once offered to my eyes, had been fastened!
"It's too late," she wailed miserably. "Do you see that? The girl has read it. She would not let me in her room. It's too late!"
"What was in it?" I cried. "What was written there?"
I saw her old mouth shut as if she meant to show me that I need expect no disclosure from her.
In her eyes, perhaps distorted by the strong lenses of her glasses, I saw the challenge of stubbornness. I felt myself growing wild with a desire to break through the unwholesome mystery which had entangled me, and overcome by any means the silence of this woman. She had arisen. She was within my reach. And I believe that I put my hands upon her, catching her two round and fleshy shoulders under my curved palms, shaking her to and fro with the excess of my excitement. In that moment before I spoke to her, she looked up at me, surprise and terror written on her face.