"Well, sir, the storm has burst!"
Ralph Mainwaring was, as his son had said, "luxuriating" in a superb reclining chair, his eyes half closed, enjoying a fine Havana, but the attorney's words seemed to produce the effect of an electric shock.
"The deuce, sir! what do you mean?" he demanded, instantly assuming an upright position.
"I simply mean that what I have expected and dreaded all along has at last come to pass."
"Then, since it was not unexpected, it is to be presumed that you were at least prepared for it! That shyster and his designing client must, at the last moment, have exerted their inventive faculties to a remarkable degree!"
"On the contrary," said the attorney, quietly ignoring the other's sarcasm, and handing copies of the evening papers to father and son, "I am satisfied that neither Hobson nor his client has any part in the developments of this afternoon."
A brief silence followed, during which the attorney watched the two men before him, noting the strange contrast between them, never until that moment so apparent. Young Mainwaring's boyish face grew pale as he read, and he occasionally glanced at Mr. Whitney, as though seeking in his face either confirmation or contradiction of the report, but he remained calm and self-possessed, preserving his gentlemanly bearing to the close of the interview. The face of the elder man, however, rapidly assumed an almost apoplectic hue, the veins standing out from his temples like whip-cords, and when he spoke his voice trembled with rage. He was the first to break the silence, as, with an oath, he flung the papers upon the floor, exclaiming,—
"It is a lie from beginning to end! The most preposterous fabrication of falsehood that could be devised! The 'will,' as it is called, is nothing but a rank forgery, and the man who dares assert any claim to the estate is a damned impostor, and I'll tell him so to his face!"
"I examined the document very carefully, Mr. Mainwaring," said the attorney, "and I shall have to admit that it certainly had every appearance of genuineness; if it is a forgery, it is an exceedingly clever one."
"Do you mean to tell me that you believe, for one moment, in this balderdash?" demanded Ralph Mainwaring, at the same time rising and striding about the room in his wrath. "The utter absurdity of the thing, that such a will ever existed, in the first place, and then that it would be secreted all these years only to be 'discovered' just at this critical moment! It is the most transparent invention I ever heard of, and it is a disgrace to your American courts that the thing was not quashed at once!"