Treasure Box Page 0,40

end of the family property and turned back to the house. They took a different path this time, and it led around a small stonewalled graveyard with an arched entrance. "Isn't it kind of morbid, keeping the family dead here on the property?" asked Quentin.

"It depends on how you regard the dead," said Madeleine. "They were part of us in life. Shouldn't they be part of us in death?"

"Will you be buried here someday?" he asked.

"I intend never to die," she said.

"Statistically, almost every woman who marries is signing on for widowhood at some time in her life."

"Do you want to be buried here?" she asked teasingly.

"Not unless I'm really dead," he said. "No fair burying me while I'm still snoring."

"You admit you snore?"

"Everybody snores," said Quentin. "But they only hear the other guy's snoring."

"And sleep through their own," said Madeleine. "Isn't that the way it goes."

"Does my snoring annoy you?"

"I think it's sweet," she said. "And when it keeps me awake, I pinch your nose and then you think you woke up to go to the bathroom and while you're in there trying in vain to aim somewhere near the toilet, I fall asleep very very quickly."

"What an efficient system. By the way, I may miss sometimes, but I've never yet peed on my feet."

"Or if you did, it didn't wake you," she said.

"You're as gross as a kid," said Quentin.

"It's one of the things you love best about me, though."

"Maybe," said Quentin. "But you have to promise to act shocked when our children talk gross. It's no fun if your parents can match you, ick for ick."

"I promise to be shocked."

They were back at the house. The dining room was empty. So was the library, and the table had been de-leafed and turned the other way, so it didn't take up the whole space between the vast walls of books. It wasn't as warm and inviting as the library in the grande dame's house had been. Instead of ladders, there was a balcony around three sides of the room, with a narrow spiral staircase leading to it. It all looked cold and uncomfortable, like a high canyon that you could only scale by taking your life in your hands climbing up a rickety narrow ladder. He went to the shelves to examine the titles, but Madeleine caught his arm almost at once. "Quentin, there's nothing readable there."

"In a house this old," he said, "there are bound to be some real finds."

"There aren't, trust me. Nobody actually reads. When this room was remodeled into a library, they bought books by the yard."

"Oh." Quentin was disappointed. He had once held a first edition, first printing of Uncle Tom's Cabin. In his hands, a book that started a war and changed the world, perhaps one of the very copies that had done it. But if the library was recent instead of old... still, even books bought at estate auctions sometimes had gems.

Nevertheless, he understood that Madeleine was more eager to open her treasure box than she wanted to admit. He let her lead him out into the entry hall and then into a parlor in the northeast corner of the house. It was lighted only by the windows, which on a winter afternoon meant the room was dim indeed, especially because heavy brocade curtains were closed at the top and swagged open near the base, so they more than half covered the glass.

Everyone was gathered here, though all but Uncle Paul and Grandmother seemed to hang back as close to the walls as the furniture allowed. Grandmother stood firmly, despite her shrunken, ancient appearance, her hands atop an intricately engraved mahogany box that stood on a small table in the middle of the room. Uncle Paul hovered near her, looking down at the box and then up at Madeleine and Quentin.

"Oh, darling, do hurry," said Uncle Paul. "I'm so eager to see what's left for you in there."

"I can bet you are," said Madeleine dryly. "Try to contain yourself."

Nevertheless, Paul's hands kept darting down toward the box, though he never quite touched it.

Grandmother's eyes stayed fixed on Quentin.

"Tin, dear," said Madeleine. "Why don't you open the box?"

"Oh, it's really not my place," said Quentin. "Your treasure, after all, and wanting to open it all these years."

Grandmother's eyes bored through him.

"Tin, I know it's silly, but now that it's come down to it, my hands are trembling so much I - isn't it silly? I guess this meant more to me than