Martin took it, and as his eyes traced the lines a sickly paleness covered his features, and in a voice scarcely stronger than an infant's, he said, “It is so.”
“The whole reversionary right?”
“Every acre—every stick and stone of it—except,” added he, with a sickly attempt at a smile, “a beggarly tract, near Kiltimmon, Mary has a charge upon.”
“Read that, now,” said Jack, handing him his recently written letter. “I was about to send it without showing it to you; but it is as well you saw it.”
While Martin was reading, Massingbred never took his eyes from him. He watched with all his own practised keenness the varying emotions the letter cost; but he saw that, as he finished, selfishness had triumphed, and that the prospect of safety had blunted every sentiment as to the price.
“Well,” said Jack, “what say you to that?”
“I say it's a right good offer, and on no account to be refused. There is some hitch or other—I can't say what, but it exists, I know—which ties us up against selling. Old Repton and the governor, and I think my mother, too, are in the secret; but I never was, so that Scanlan's proposal is exactly what meets the difficulty.”
“But do you like his conditions?” asked Jack.
“I can't say I do. But what 's that to the purpose? One must play the hand that is dealt to them; there 's no choice! I know that, as agent over the property, he 'll make a deuced good thing of it for himself. It will not be five nor ten per cent will satisfy Master Maurice.”
“Yes; but there is another condition, also,” said Jack, quietly.