She had
noticed occasionally that his expression was fretful and impatient when
he looked round at her from an open cabinet or cupboard and gave his
orders; and she inferred that something in connection with his papers
and possessions--it might or might not be the Secret Trust--irritated
and annoyed him from time to time. She had heard him more than once lock
something up in one of the rooms, come out and go into another room,
wait there a few minutes, then return to the first room with his keys in
his hand, and sharply turn the locks and turn them again. This fidgety
anxiety about his keys and his cupboards might be the result of the
inbred restlessness of his disposition, aggravated in a naturally active
man by the aimless indolence of a life in retirement--a life drifting
backward and forward among trifles, with no regular employment to steady
it at any given hour of the day. On the other hand, it was just as
probable that these comings and goings, these lockings and unlockings,
might be attributable to the existence of some private responsibility
which had unexpectedly intruded itself into the old man's easy
existence, and which tormented him with a sense of oppression new to the
experience of his later years.
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