“I pledge myself that they require nothing unworthy of the cloth,” said sir Wilton.

“The cloth be hanged,” said Wingfold. “Do they require anything unworthy of a man—or, if you think the word means more—of a gentleman?”

“They do not,” answered the baronet.

“Then you must write another paper, stating that you have asked me to undertake this, but that you have given me no hint of the contents of the accompanying document. This second you must enclose with the first, sealing the envelope with your own seal.”

Sir Wilton at once consented, and immediately did as Wingfold desired.

“I’ve checkmated my lady at last!” he chuckled as he drove home. “She would have me the villain to disinherit my firstborn for her miserable brood! She shall find my other will, and think she’s safe! Then the thunderbolt! My lady’s money won’t be much for Percy the cad and Arthur the proper, not to mention Dorothy the cow, and Vixen the rat!”

He always spoke as if lady Ann’s children were none of his. Her ladyship had taught him to do so, for she always said, “My children!”

That night he slept with an easier mind. He had kept putting the deed off, regarding it as his abdication. Now that it was done he felt more comfortable.

Wingfold suspected in the paper some provision for Richard, but could imagine no reason for letting it lie unopened until a year should have passed from the baronet’s death. Troubling himself nothing, however, about what was not his business, he put the paper carefully aside—but where he would see it now and then, lest it should pass from his mind. With sir Wilton’s permission he told his wife what he had undertaken, that she might carry it out if he were prevented from doing so.

In the fourth year Richard wrote to his father, through his grandfather, informing him he had his B.A. degree and was awaiting further orders. The baronet was heartily pleased with the style of his letter, and in the privacy of his own room gave way to his delight at the thought of his wife’s approaching consternation. At the same time, however, he was not a little uneasy. The eyes of his wife had become almost a terror to him. Their gray ice, which had not grown clearer as she grew older, made him shiver. Why should the stronger so often be afraid of the weaker? Sometimes, I suppose, because the conscience happens to side with the weaker, or perhaps only because the weaker is able to make the stronger feel worse than uncomfortable. The baronet dared not present his son to his wife except in the presence of at least one stranger.

He wrote to Richard, appointing a day for his appearance at Mortgrange.

— Forty-Nine —

The Heir

It was a lovely morning as Richard, his heart beating with a hope whose intensity of bliss he had never imagined, stopped at the station nearest to Mortgrange and set out to walk there in the afternoon sun. June folded him in her loveliness of warmth and colour. Often he had walked the same road, a contented tradesman.