Then Letitia joined him—
‘Yes, father?’
‘Sit down please. What I have to say will take some time.’ He paused—
‘A letter has reached me this morning from Lady Farrington’s—the dowager’s—lawyer. It may be all a hoax; let us hope that it is; but I confess I am greatly disturbed by what it says.’
Letitia looked at him, keenly interrogative, but said nothing.
‘You remember, no doubt, the circumstances of the old dowager’s craze? It was no secret in the family. She pretended that a grandchild of hers was in existence, who was the rightful heir to the title and estates; all that you knew, of course?’
‘I had heard the absurd story. Idiotic old woman! I cannot understand why you ever let her out,’ said Letitia, as though her father had full powers to commit to durance indefinite every individual likely to injure the Farrington family or whose brain was touched, the two being synonymous terms.
‘I did not wish to let her out, I assure you. It was done in spite of me, and by the person who is, I believe, at the bottom of the newest attempt to defraud us of our rights.’
‘Are they threatened?—by whom?’ Letitia was like a lioness who, with her whelps, was about to be robbed of her prey.
‘The old lady, you must know, did not fabricate her story without something to go upon. There was some semblance of probability. She produced the rightful heir—not quite at the right time, perhaps, but there he was.’