Arthur Lestrange was sharply troubled when he found he was to see no more of Barbara. He went again and again to Wylder Hall, but neither mother nor daughter would receive him. When he learned that Miss Brown was for sale, he bought her for love of her mistress. All the explanation he could get from lady Ann was that the young woman’s mother was impossible—she was more than half savage.

Time’s wheels went slow thereafter at Mortgrange. Sir Wilton missed his firstborn. Whatever annoyed him in his wife or any of her children fed his desire for Richard. Arthur did not please him. He had in no way distinguished himself—and some men are annoyed when their sons prove only a little better than themselves. Percy was a poisoned thorn in his side. He was even worse than his father. All his thoughts took refuge in Richard.

He had become dissatisfied with his agent, and although he had never taken an interest in business, distrust made him now look into things a little. He called his lawyer from London, and had him make a thorough investigation. Dismissing his agent as a result, he would have Arthur take charge of the estate. But the young man, with an inborn dislike to figures, flatly refused, saying he preferred the army. Sir Wilton did not like the army. He had been in it himself, and had left it in a hurry—no one ever knew why.

The only comfort in the house occupied the soul of lady Ann. It was that she heard nothing of the bookbinder fellow. She had grown so lethargic that when Danger was not flattening his nose against the windowpane, she was at peace. A lawyer of her own had the will in his keeping, and she had come upon no trace of another.

But when sir Wilton sent for his lawyer to look into his factor’s accounts, he had a further use for him, of which his wife heard nothing—he made him draw up another will, in which he left everything to Richard, only son of his first wife, Robina Armour.

With every precaution for secrecy, the will was signed and witnessed, but when the lawyer would have carried it with him, the baronet declined to give it up. He laid it aside for a week, then had the horses put to, and drove to find Mr. Wingfold, of whom he had heard from Richard.