stand the will, Aunt Augusta and I are to make the choice. Isn't that so, Aunt?"
Augusta nodded, judicially. "Pheasant already has her bequest."
"She has nothing of the sort!" said Piers, vehemently. "The ruby ring was a present entirely outside the will."
"I agree," said Renny.
A sultry lull fell on the room for a moment, in which could be heard the ticking of the clock, the heavy breathing of Nicholas, and the loud tap of a woodpecker on a tree near the open window. The momentary silence was broken by Augusta's contralto tones.
"The whole situation is disgraceful," she said. "I've never known such insensibility. Here I and my brothers are put off with not very valuable personal possessions of my mother's, and expected to be content while all the squabbling goes on among the rest of you over her jewels."
Nicholas added fuel to the flame: "And the memory of our mother is insulted by one nephew who says she sponged on Renny"
"And we, too," put in Ernest.
Nicholas continued, gnawing his grey moustache: "While another nephew benevolently tells us that he's never grudged us shelter and our meals!"
"If you're going to bring that up again," Renny exclaimed, despairingly, "I shall get out, and that's flat!"
Maurice Vaughan said, heavily: "What we should all do is to get down to brass tacks, if possible, and find out why your grandmother did such an extraordinary thing as to leave all her money to Finch."
Augusta reared her head in his direction. "My mother was deranged—there is no doubt of it."
"Have you anything to go on?" asked Vaughan. "Had she been acting strangely, in your opinion?"
"I've noticed a difference."
Meg asked eagerly: "What sort of things, Auntie?"
"For one thing, I overheard her several times talking to herself."
