"Particularly as I am dying. No, you cannot. George, give me a glass of that stuff. I am very weak, Sir Henry, and can't say much more to you."
"May I ask you this one question, sir? Have you provided for your granddaughter?"
"Provided for her!" and the old man made a sadly futile attempt to utter the words with that ominous shriek which a few years since would have been sure to frighten any man who would have asked such a question. "What sort of man can he be, George, to come to me now with such a question?" And so saying, he pulled the clothes over him as though resolved to hold no further conversation.
"He is very weak," said George. "I think you had better leave him."
A hellish expression came across the lawyer's face. "Yes," he said to himself; "go away, that I may leave you here to reap the harvest by yourself. Go away, and know myself to be a beggar." He had married this man's grandchild, and yet he was to be driven from his bedside like a stranger.
"Tell him to go," said Mr. Bertram. "He will know it all in a day or two."
"You hear what he says," whispered George.
"I do hear," muttered the other, "and I will remember."
"He hardly thinks I would alter my will now, does he? Perhaps he has pen and ink in his pocket, ready to do it."
"I have only spoken in anxiety about my wife," said Sir Henry; "and I thought you would remember that she was your child's daughter."