Great Possessions

e was not a man who would neglect business. I came here with a faint hope--or I tried to think it was a hope--that you might have another will in the house. I'm afraid this--document represents Sir David Bright's last wishes." There was a ring of indignant scorn in his voice.

Rose looked through the window on to the thin black London turf outside, and her eyes were blank from the intensity of concentration. She had no thought for the lawyer; if he had been sympathetic even to impertinence she would not have noticed it.

She was questioning her own instincts, her perceptions. No, it was almost more as if she were emptying her mind of any conscious action that her whole power of instinctive perception might have play. When the blow had fallen, her only surprise had been to find that she was not surprised, not astonished. It seemed as if she had known this all the time, for the thing had been alongside of her for years, she had lived too close to it for any surprise when it raised its head and found