‘I see,’ said Tor, ‘that it is neither sealed nor fastened. No doubt you are master of its contents. I think it would be better that you should read it to us. Is that your wish, Maud?’
‘Yes,’ she answered readily. ‘I would rather it was read aloud.’
Belassis had no choice but to obey. Perhaps he did not object to the task. The letter might possibly convince the company that the will did but embody the real wishes of Philip Debenham, senior.
He cleared his throat, and began:
‘My dear and only Daughter,’
(‘As if papa would ever have begun a letter like that!’ breathed Maud indignantly.)
‘When this reaches your hand, you will have been made aware of my dearest wish for your future—a wish that has been near my heart for many long years, and which will, I am convinced, secure at once the happiness and well-being of your future life. I mean by this, your marriage with the son of my dearest and most faithful friend, Alfred Belassis. I cannot doubt that the son of such a father will grow up to resemble him; and I feel that I am doing the best that can be done for your future, as well as gratifying my own earnest wish, when I try to do that which will make you a happy woman for life. When your name is Belassis I shall not know an ungratified wish; and if, as is probable, I shall not live to see the day on which your choice is made, you will know that by consenting to a marriage with your cousin, you will be at once securing to yourself the fortune which I have conditionally left to you, and doing that which has been, and always will be, the most sincere wish of your affectionate father,
‘Philip Debenham.’
Dead silence followed the reading of this elegantly worded epistle.
Philip Debenham had been a man of high culture and refined scholarly tastes. His letters had been models of the art of diction. Anything clumsy in construction, or faulty in expression, had certainly never issued from his pen; and anyone who had ever known him in his lifetime, or had even known what manner of man he was, must be convinced that whether or not that letter was written by himself, its contents had never been composed by him.