Loe raamatut: «The White Virgin», lehekülg 5

Chapter Eleven.
Jessop Plays Trumps

Jessop Reed, when he left his father’s bedroom, had gone straight down to the study, with his brow contracted and his heart full of bitterness, without seeing that he was closely watched, and that a pale, troubled face was raised over the top balustrade, which looked very dull and gloomy in the yellow light which streamed through the soot-darkened skylight panes.

“So that’s it,” he said to himself, as he closed the door and threw himself into his father’s great morocco-covered chair. “I’m nobody at all. The new king is to reign, and his name is Clive. I’m not even executor. No voice in anything; only the naughty boy to be punished. If I could only see that will!”

His eyes wandered about the dark room with its conventional cases of books that were never read, and he looked at the cabinets and writing-table as if he expected to see some drawer open with the key already in it, so that he could take out the will and read it at his ease.

But he shook his head, for he knew that his father was too business-like a man to be careless over so important a document.

“At the lawyer’s,” he said to himself; “and there is no need. I know the old man too well; but I wonder what he has said. A few hundred a year for his naughty boy, and the dear, good, industrious youth, who always did as father wished, nearly everything.”

“I know,” he said, half aloud, as he sat back in the chair and took out his cigar-case to open it and select a strong, black roll of the weed, bit off the end savagely, and spat it upon the carpet.

“I suppose I may smoke here now without getting into grief. Poor old boy! his game’s over; but, curse him, he might have played fair.”

He lit the cigar, and began to smoke and muse with his eyes half closed.

“I know,” he thought, and he laughed bitterly. “To my dear old friend, Peter Praed, M.D., my cellar of wine, the Turner picture, and one hundred pounds to buy a mourning ring and as recompense for acting as my executor. To my servants fifty pounds each and six months’ wages. To my son Jessop the interest on bank-stock to produce five hundred pounds per annum, paid in quarterly dividends. To my beloved son, Clive Reed, the whole of my remaining property in bank-stock, shares, and my interest in the ‘White Virgin’ mine in the county of Derby. Hah! yes,” he said aloud, “and it is good, or the old man would not have taken it up as he has. Yes, it is no balloon business puffed into a state of inflation, but a genuine, solid affair. All to him, and he is co-executor with the Doctor. He said he had made him so months ago; I am nowhere. And that’s my father!”

He bit off a piece of the end of his cigar and spat it out angrily, but started up as a thought struck him.

“No, that’s not all,” he muttered, as his eyes flashed, – “Janet!”

“Of course,” he said, with a long-drawn breath, full of satisfaction, “he would not forget her. He worshipped the girl, and he would leave her quite independent of Clive. A hundred thousand, if he has left her a penny. The artful little jade: she played her cards right with the old man.”

He started from the chair, threw the cigar-end into the fireplace, and hurried up to the drawing-room, to find it empty, and rang the bell.

“Where is Miss Praed?” he asked, as the servant appeared.

“She was fetched up into poor master’s room, sir.”

Jessop Reed went back to the study, and shut himself in, his brow contracted more and more, and lighting another cigar, he lay back smoking and thinking intently, but with his face less clouded by anger, as he felt more and more satisfied that he was right about his father’s disposition of his property, and over his own plans and those of his friend Wrigley.

“There is such a thing as salvage when there is a fire,” he said, with a laugh which disfigured his handsome features; “and it comes in too after a wreck. Well, we shall see, my dear brother; matters may balance themselves fairly after all.”

He started almost out of his chair just then, for a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and there stood pretty, fair-haired Lyddy, with her eyes red and swollen with weeping.

“How did you get here?” cried Jessop angrily.

“I opened the door, dear, and came in softly; didn’t you hear me?”

“Hear you? No; and how many more times am I to tell you not to call me dear?”

“Oh, Jessop, don’t, don’t!” cried the poor girl, bursting into tears. “Poor master! he’s dying fast, they say, and there’ll be no need to hide anything from him now.”

“But – but – ”

“I was on the staircase watching for you, dear, and you were shut up here so long, instead of being with master, that I was afraid you were ill.”

“Well, I’m not; so now go, there’s a good girl; and wait a bit till I’ve settled something about you.”

“Settled something about me, dear! Why, as soon as poor dear master’s dead you’ll be master then, and can do as you like. You won’t be the first gentleman who has married a servant.”

“Oh no, of course not,” he replied, with a bitter sarcasm in his tone.

“And you will make me happy then, won’t you, dear? For I am so miserable when I see you courting Miss Janet, I could find it in my heart to go some night to the Serpentine and end it all.”

“Will you hold your tongue?” he cried, with a shiver. “Do you think I haven’t enough to worry me as it is? Now, my good girl, is this a time for you to come bothering me?”

“I’m not a good girl,” she replied with spirit; “and it’s cruel of you, in your man’s selfishness, to talk of my bothering you. No, no, no, I won’t be angry with you,” she cried, hurriedly changing her tone. “And now, dear, that you can do as you like, you will not think of Miss Janet any more.”

“Wait,” he said sullenly; “and now go. Do you think I want the servants to be tattling about your being shut up here?”

“Let them tattle,” cried the girl proudly. “Let them, if they dare. They shall soon find that I’m their mistress. Tattle, indeed!”

“You heard what I said. Now, then, go away from here at once. There’s a ten-pound note. Don’t bother about your pay, but get away from here, for your dignity’s sake. Your box can be fetched at any time. Go down home.”

“Go down home!” said the girl in a low voice, full of suppressed anger; “home, eh? so as to be out of your way now? No,” she cried, flashing out into a fit of passion; “it’s to get rid of me. I’m in your way now that you are going to be master, and you don’t mean to marry me, as you’ve promised a hundred times. I know: it’s Miss Janet.”

“Lyddy, don’t be a fool,” cried Jessop, in a tone full of suppressed passion. “Now, go, there’s a good girl. It’s all for the best. Hush! you will be heard.”

“Then every one shall hear me,” she cried, tearing up the note he had placed in her hand and flinging it in his face. “No; I won’t be a fool any longer. You’re as good as master now; you’ve promised to marry me, and I will not be packed off in disgrace. You’re master here, Jessop, and I’m mistress; and come what may, I will not stir.”

She flung her arms round him as she spoke, and in his rage he raised his doubled fist to strike her down, but it fell to his side.

“Mr Jessop Reed is not master here,” said a stern voice at the door, “and you are not the mistress.”

Jessop flung the girl from him, so that she staggered, and would have fallen heavily, had not Clive, who had opened the door softly to come and sit with his brother, caught her in his arms.

“Jessop,” he said coldly, “have you not done enough to insult our father without this miserable disgraceful episode, now while he is lying upstairs almost at his last.”

“The woman’s mad,” cried Jessop. “Crazy with grief or drink, I suppose. I don’t know what she means.”

“I’m not, I’m not, Mr Clive,” cried the girl, bursting into a violent fit of weeping.

“Lyddy,” cried Jessop.

“I don’t care; I must, I will speak. He has promised to marry me again and again, and now that master is dying and he is going to be free to do as he likes, he is trying to pack me off – to send me home, and I’d sooner go and jump off the bridges at once.”

“Jessop!” cried Clive, “how can you be such a scoundrel?”

“Scoundrel yourself!” shouted Jessop furiously. “The woman’s an impostor; it’s a hatched-up breach of promise case to get money – a fraud.”

“No, no, no,” cried Lyddy wildly, as she flung herself at Clive’s feet, and caught and clung to his hands. “It’s true – all true. Dear Mr Clive, don’t, don’t you forsake me. Don’t you turn against me now.”

“Doctor! you here!” cried Clive, as he became conscious of the fact that they were not alone; and he made a step to cross the room to where Doctor Praed was standing with his child’s arm locked in his. But, at the first movement, Lyddy uttered a piteous cry, clung to him wildly, and suffered herself to be dragged over, and half lie sobbing hysterically on the carpet.

“Yes, sir, I am here,” said the Doctor gravely.

“But my father?” cried Clive excitedly.

“Is spared this fresh trouble, sir,” said the Doctor coldly.

“Dead!” cried Clive, in a voice fall of agony, and he turned to his brother.

Jessop was drawing Janet’s arm through his as she gazed with flashing eyes at her betrothed.

“Come away,” Jessop whispered. “Janet, dearest, this is no place for you.”

Chapter Twelve.
In Russell Square

“But surely, Doctor, you don’t believe I could be such a scoundrel?”

“My dear Clive, I should be sorry to think ill of any one, but you see I am a student of man’s nature.”

“Then you believe it?”

“That you are a scoundrel, my dear boy? Oh, dear no; I think you one of the best of fellows, or I would not have allowed that engagement to take place; and as I said to Janet, we must be a bit lenient; there was every excuse.”

“What!” roared Clive, leaping from his seat in Doctor Praed’s consulting-room the morning after his father’s death.

“Now, now, be calm, and listen to what I have to say.”

Clive sank back with his face flushed and hands clenched, while the Doctor continued gravely —

“She was hot-headed and angry as could be when I got her home. You see, my dear boy, women are different in their nerve forces to men. There had been a great drain upon her during the interview with your poor father, and then the sad surprise with that woman and the shock of your father’s death combined were sufficient to completely disturb the nerve centres.”

Clive Reed looked at the Doctor, as though he would have liked to shake him, but he only waited.

“I told her, as I have said, that she must not be too severe.”

Clive drew his breath hard.

“That, speaking as her father and a man of the world of a few experiences, a young lady was in error if she expected to find the man to whom she was betrothed quite perfect.”

“Doctor, you’ll drive me mad,” said Clive.

“No, I am going to teach you to be a little philosophical and to be patient, for of course she will come round. I am angry, terribly angry with you; I think it disgraceful – ”

“But – ”

“Hear me out, boy, or, confound you, I’ll have you shown the door,” cried the Doctor angrily. Then calming down: “It is most unfortunate, coming at such a time, too. The old writer may well have said that about our pleasant vices and the rods, or whatever it was, to scourge us. Be silent, sir: you shall speak when I have done. I know there was every excuse, living in the same house with a pretty gentle young girl who looked above her station, but was not in her manners. I have known lots of cases. Bit of vanity – good-looking young master – thinks she’ll be a lady – flings herself literally at young fellow’s head. Yes, a young man needs to be superhuman, I may say, under the circumstances.”

“Have you done, Doctor?”

“No, sir, I have not. You will have to go through a kind of probation with Janet – and with me, of course; and in time the matter may perhaps be patched up. Now we will set that aside, and talk about the business matters connected with your father’s decease. Poor old Grantham! It’s a gap out of my life, Clive. We were chums for thirty years. Thank God he did not know of this, poor fellow, for he thought so highly of you, my boy.”

“Would to God he were here now!” cried Clive passionately.

“Amen!”

“To hear his son defend himself. I swear to you, Doctor Praed, by all that is holy, by my dead father lying there at home, and who from the spirit-world may hear my words, I am perfectly innocent. For years I have not had a thought that Janet might not know – that has not been hers. It was all a mistake – a misconception, and in her hurry and readiness to jump at conclusions she believed it.”

“But, my dear boy, do you mean to deny that the unhappy girl, whose words I heard as she knelt by you, has not had a promise of marriage?”

“No, sir – unfortunately no.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“Oh, Doctor,” cried Clive passionately, “why is it in this, world that one man may go on adding blot after blot to his bespattered scutcheon, and at each revelation people smile and shrug their shoulders; while another who has tried to make his life blameless and keep the shield of his honour bright is doubted at the first blur that is cast upon it; every one seems to rejoice, sets him down as a hypocrite, and cries ‘Ah! found out at last!’”

“Well, my boy, it is human nature. I must confess to feeling something like that yesterday myself.”

“Then shame upon you, sir! – Doctor, you’ve known me from a boy, and ought to be better able to judge me.”

“Well, you see, my boy, the circumstances,” said the Doctor – “the temptations. You suddenly lifted up to a position of great wealth and influence, she a poor servant.”

“Doctor, she is a gentle woman, and my nature would not let me forsake her like a brute. Damn you, sir!” cried Clive, leaping from his seat, “how dare you believe it of me – that I could come here ready to swear fidelity to Janet, kiss her sweet pure lips, and tender her my love, while I frankly offered you – her father – my hand? It is a shame, a disgrace, a blot upon your own nature, to think it of your old friend’s son.”

“I – I – beg your pardon, Clive, humbly, my boy,” said the Doctor, rising and catching the young man by the shoulders. “I was wrong, I ought to have known you better. I am as hasty and jealous as Janet. Forgive me. I was angry for my child’s sake. Things looked so against you. There, there! curse me again, my dear boy, I deserve it, I do indeed.”

“Then you do not believe it now?” cried Clive, as the Doctor got hold of his hands and shook them warmly.

“Believe it? No, not a word of it, nor shall Janet neither – a silly little jealous baby. Then it was that scoundrel Jessop, and the poor girl was appealing to you for help?”

“I am not going to be my brother’s accuser,” said Clive bitterly.

“And he played the hypocrite, and took Janet away home here out of the scene. Here! say damn again to me, Clive, my boy, for I am about the most idiotic old fool that ever lived. But why – why the deuce didn’t you speak out?”

“I was literally stunned, sir.”

“But the girl – why didn’t you make her?”

“You saw, sir; she ran sobbing out of the room.”

“Then you must make her speak now. No, no: not now; let’s set this aside till after the funeral. We cannot enter into such matters with my poor old friend lying there.”

“No, sir, not there; and there is a hindrance: the poor girl has gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes; she disappeared last night. But I cannot go on living like this, Doctor. Take me up to Janet now; I must clear myself in her eyes.”

“I would, my boy, but she is not here.”

“Not here?” cried Clive excitedly.

“No; she left this letter and went out again within an hour.”

The Doctor took a note from his breast-pocket and handed it to Clive to read.

“Cannot stay at home and hear about that shame and disgrace – gone away to be at peace, and try to forget it – with one of her aunts or a schoolfellow – will write,” stammered Clive, as he hastily read the letter.

“Yes, my dear boy, you know what a creature of impulse she is; and I don’t know that we can wonder under the circumstances.”

“But tell me – where do you think she will be? I must follow her.”

“Heaven only knows,” said the Doctor. “Since my poor wife died she has been mistress here, and naturally very independent and womanly – a strange girl, my dear boy. I have been so wrapped up in my profession, that I have lost the habit of guiding her.”

“But the servants – what do they say?”

“That your brother saw her to the door, and she went straight up to her bedroom and shut herself in. When I came back she had gone out again, leaving this letter. I am afraid, my boy, you will have to wait. But there! it will be all right. Poor child! she will be as humble to you as I am. – Yes!”

This was to the Doctor’s confidential servant, who brought in half-a-dozen cards with pencilled appeals.

“Dear me! dear me!” said the Doctor, taking the cards. “Any one else?”

“Room’s packed, sir.”

“Clive, my dear boy, I must see my poor patients. There, there! go and wait patiently. I’ll come on to-night. You will see to matters, and perhaps I shall have a letter from Janet, and you will be able to write to her or go and see her. There, there! We are all straight again?”

“My dear old friend!” cried Clive.

“That’s right! I did see the lawyer last night. Go and be patient; matters are mending fast. One moment though. Clive, my dear boy, angry passions rise; you will not go and see your brother.”

“No, sir; he is keeping out of my way, or – ”

“Eh? yes – or what?”

“I believe I should kill him.”

Chapter Thirteen.
The Rich Man’s Will

Jessop Reed took good care that his brother should have no opportunity for meeting him to bring him to book, and during the interval before Grantham Reed’s funeral the only news Clive heard of Janet was that she would be back to accompany her father to old Mr Reed’s burial.

“There! my dear boy,” said the Doctor; “I can do no more. You see she does not even give me her address. I believe, though, that she is down at Weymouth with the Hartleys.”

This was on the day before the funeral, and Clive had to exercise a little more patience till after all was over.

He was calmer now. There was that awful presence in the gloomy old house, and he felt that it was no time to think of his own troubles or to attack his brother. These matters, in spite of the suffering they caused him, were put aside, and he sat in the study thinking of all that had passed with the stern, kindly-hearted old man lying above there in his last sleep. Of how he had fought the world to amass wealth, and of this his last speculation, whose success he had been fated not to witness, cut off as he was just after his son’s announcement of the wealth it must of a certainty produce.

It seemed to Clive to be a hard lesson in the vanity of human hopes; but he did not flinch from his task.

“It was his wish,” he said to himself, “that the mine should come out triumphant, and it shall, for all our sakes.”

As he mused, he thought of different business friends who had embarked in the speculation upon the base of his father’s credit, but mainly upon the reports which he had sent home, his father having made these announcements to him during his absence in the replies to letters, the last being that the Doctor had bought heavily just before the shares bounded up and were still rising.

“Poor old father!” he said to himself; “he shall find that I will do my duty by it to the end, for I suppose he will leave me the management – perhaps fully to take his place.”

These business matters would intrude, and he did not cavil at them, for he knew that he was carrying out the old man’s wishes.

Then came the thoughts of Janet again, and they were mingled with a bitter feeling of indignation against her for her readiness to think evil of one whose every thought had been true. But he knew that the reconciliation would be very sweet, and told himself that she was still but a girl, and that her character would ripen by and by.

“And be full of trust,” he muttered.

Then the scene of her leaving that room, angry, jealous, and proud, leaning upon his brother’s arm, came back, and a sensation of fierce anger thrilled him.

“A coward!” he muttered, “a base, miserable coward! Well, we shall meet to-morrow, and afterward the less we see one another in the future the better for both.”

Then he hurriedly devoted himself to his father’s papers, so as to change the current of his thoughts and try to check the throbbing of his brain.

The next day broke gloomy and chill, well in accordance with the solemn occasion. Grantham Reed had instructed that his funeral should be perfectly quiet, and that few people should be asked, but many came unbidden to show their respect for a business friend whose name had been a power in the City, his word as good as any bond.

Jessop came late, and took his place in the darkened drawing-room without a word; and, nearly the last, Doctor Praed arrived with Janet, in deep mourning, and her face hidden behind a thick crape veil, without a word passing between her and either of the brothers, from both of whom she seemed to shrink.

A few of the oldest friends went up to see the dead; then Janet placed her hand upon her father’s arm, and went to the solemn chamber, staying some time, and being led back hanging heavily upon her father’s arm, sobbing bitterly and covering her face beneath her veil as she sank down in her seat.

Clive’s heart throbbed and his eyes grew dim.

“God bless her!” he murmured to himself; “she did love him dearly.”

He felt softened, and as if he could rush across the room, clasp her to his heart, and whisper that he was true, as staunch as steel to her, the darling of his heart, his first and only love.

But it was neither time nor place for such an action, and turning to his brother, he signed to him to come, and, in the midst of a silence broken only by Janet’s sobs, they two went out and upstairs without a word, to stand by the open coffin where their father lay calmly as if in sleep.

“How can I feel enmity now!” thought Clive, “as we stand here before you, father, whom I shall see no more on earth? Am I to forgive him and wipe away the past?”

As the young man bent down in that solemn moment, the words of the old prayer came to him, and he breathed out, “As we forgive them that trespass against us,” and tenderly kissed the broad forehead.

Then half-blinded he went out, conscious that his brother followed him closely down to the drawing-room, to listen, as Janet’s sobs still rose from time to time, to the heavy footsteps overhead, the hurried rustling on the stairs, and then to rise when the door was opened, and pass out with his brother to the mourning-coach.

Two hours, and the party were back in the long, gloomy dining-room, well filled now, for of the many who followed, those most intimate had entered to hear the reading of the deceased’s will.

The brothers were widely separated now, while the Doctor, who looked old and careworn, was seated near the family lawyer, who sat there at a table with a tin despatch-box by his elbow, the most important personage present. Janet was by her father’s side, clinging to his hand, still closely veiled, but trembling and weak, while a faint, half-suppressed sob escaped from her lips at intervals.

A few remarks were made by old friends, but the importance of the occasion acted as a check, and there was a sigh of relief as the deceased’s old legal friend cleared his throat, put on his glasses, and took them off again twice to rub away imaginary blurrings which obscured his sight.

Then he began to read the various clauses of the will, which was singularly free from repetition, being concise, business-like, and clear in the extreme.

Clive, as he sat back in his chair, half closed his eyes, for to him it was as if his father were speaking, and all sounded so matter-of-fact that he felt that he had nothing to learn at first. Everything nearly was as he expected to hear; while Jessop, who kept his eyes rigidly fixed upon the lawyer’s lips, smiled in a peculiar way as he found how prophetic he had been.

There were the minor bequests to servants of small sums and six or twelve months’ wages; a snuff-box to this old friend, a signet ring to another, the watch and chain “to my dear trusty old friend Peter Praed, doctor of medicine; also one hundred pounds as a slight remuneration for his services as co-executor.” And so on, and so on, till the lawyer turned over a sheet and paused for a few moments before beginning again, amidst profound silence now, for the more interesting portion of the will was to come.

In brief. “To my son Jessop Reed, the interest of twenty-one thousand pounds, two and a half per cent, bank-stock, to be paid to him during the term of his life quarterly by my executors, the aforesaid Peter Praed and Clive Reed, the capital sum of twenty-one thousand pounds reverting at the death of my said son Jessop Reed to my estate.”

“Exactly what I expected,” said Jessop, with a smile of indifference. “Five hundred a year, eh?”

“About, sir,” said the old lawyer gravely. Then, after sitting attent, as if expecting another question, he coughed again, and went on.

“I give and bequeath to my son, Clive Reed, the whole of my interest in the ‘White Virgin’ mine, together with everything of which I die possessed in shares, bank-stocks, freehold and leasehold property, begging him that he will act in his possession thereof as a true and just man, and the steward of a large estate committed to his charge. I do this believing that he will carry out my wishes in connection with the said property for his own benefit, as well as for that of many friends who have embarked their money in my last enterprise, the aforesaid ‘White Virgin’ mine.”

The lawyer read the few remaining words connected with the signature amidst a murmur of congratulations, in the midst of which Jessop started up, black with fury and disappointment.

“Shame!” he cried. “I protest!” and a dead silence fell.

“May I ask why, sir?” said the lawyer coldly. “My deceased friend has done more than his duty by you.”

“Your words are uncalled-for and insolent, sir,” cried Jessop. “Recollect that you are only a paid professional man.”

“And Grantham Reed’s trusted confidential friend, sir. Dr Praed and I were the two men to whom he opened his heart – eh, Doctor?”

“Yes, in all things.”

“I was not speaking about my own beggarly, tied-up legacy,” cried Jessop, who was now deadly pale, “but of the cruel, disgraceful way in which my father has behaved to a young lady whom he professed to love as a daughter, and led to expect that she would stand high in his will.”

Janet’s hands were extended deprecatingly toward the speaker, and Clive half rose in his chair, but sank back as the lawyer said coldly —

“Perhaps Mr Jessop Reed will listen to the codicil before he adds to a long list of injuries by casting aspersions upon the generosity of my dear dead friend.”

“What! is there a codicil?” cried Jessop.

The lawyer bowed his head.

“Then why have you kept it back, sir?”

“Because it comes last,” said the lawyer, with a faint smile, “and also because I have had no opportunity to read it on account of interruptions.”

A dead silence fell once more, and Clive darted a glance across to Janet, whose eyes, as far as he could see, appeared to be directed at his brother.

“The codicil,” began the lawyer, “is dated six months before our lamented friend’s death.”

He paused, and then read on, after the customary preliminaries —

“I give and bequeath to Janet Praed, daughter of my old friend, Peter Praed, the sum of one hundred thousand pounds, standing in Bank of England and Government of India stock, free of legacy duty.”

“Hah!” cried Jessop, in a triumphant tone; and unable to contain himself, he rose and crossed to Janet to take her hands, which she resigned to him, while Clive felt as if he had received a thrust from a knife, as the old lawyer raised his head and gazed curiously at the group before him.

Then, as a low murmur once more arose, the lawyer coughed loudly, and went on; every ear being again attent to his words, as he raised his voice and sent a galvanic shock through the semicircle of his listeners.

“Conditionally – ”

He paused, and Jessop dropped Janet’s hands, while his lips parted, displaying his white teeth.

“Conditionally,” repeated the lawyer, “upon her becoming the wife of my son, Clive Reed. In the event of her refusing to fulfil these my wishes, the above legacy of one hundred thousand pounds to become null and void.”

Jessop muttered an oath beneath his breath as he literally staggered at this announcement.

Then, recovering himself —

“Stop!” he cried hoarsely; “there is another codicil.”

“No, sir,” said the old lawyer gravely; and he began slowly to double up the will.

“Wait a minute, sir,” cried Jessop, whose hand, as he stretched it out in the midst of a painful silence, was trembling visibly.

“Jessop – dear Jessop,” said Janet faintly, as she tore off her veil, “be calm;” and she took a step or two towards the infuriated man, while Clive felt sick, as if from some terrible blow, and sat gazing at the shrinking girl as, with her face drawn with misery and white as ashes, she touched his brother on the arm.

“Silence, woman!” he cried. “Here you!” and he turned to the lawyer, “give me that will.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the lawyer gravely. “I have read the document.”

“Give it to me, I say. I want to see for myself.”

“It is not customary, sir,” replied the lawyer. “You have heard its contents, and I am custodian, the representative of every one whose name is mentioned there.”

“Give it to me, I say,” cried Jessop, stepping forward. “I will read it aloud again – myself.”

There was a dull sound, a snap, and the rattle of a key being withdrawn.

“No, sir,” said the lawyer, placing the key in his pocket. “In your excited state, and as the elder son, I would not trust that document in your hand a moment.”

“And quite right,” said Dr Praed firmly.

Quick as lightning Jessop made a dash at the lawyer; but a strong hand was upon his arm, and he was swung aside by Clive.

“Are you mad – and at a time like this!”

“Call it what you like,” cried Jessop, “but don’t you think I am going to be cheated and juggled out of my – of her rights. You have your share and are out of court. I’ll have that will and read it over again.”