There were no relations to come to the house; all the orders were given by Mr Pitt, Mr Tregennas’s lawyer, a little withered red-faced man with shrewd eyes, who was there when they arrived, and who kept himself in the library, away from them all, until the day of the funeral. Perhaps a more silent four could hardly have been found than the men who were gathered in the old damp house, although with Marmaduke the silence was rather compulsion than choice. Anthony was very grave and subdued. When the funeral came they were all together almost for the first time, rumbling along the desolate overgrown road, with two or three empty carriages crawling behind them, which had been sent by the neighbours with a vague belief that it was an easy method of doing honour to the dead. The rain was falling still as they all rumbled back again, and gathered in the library to hear Mr Pitt read the will. It was soon done. A few annuities were bequeathed to the old servants, five thousand pounds free of legacy duty to his great-nephew, Marmaduke Lee, and the remainder, half in entail and half unreservedly, to the great-nephew of his second wife, Anthony Miles. William Miles, clerk, was appointed executor.
Mr Pitt’s monotonous reading was interrupted by Marmaduke Lee, with a white, quivering face,—
“I protest against such a will as a fraud. I can prove it to be a fraud,” he cried, lifting his hand and letting it fall tremulously on the table.
Anthony neither turned towards him nor moved. Mr Miles said, a little hurriedly,—
“When Mr Pitt has finished, my son has something to say.”
The lawyer, looking quietly from one to the other, took up his sing-song again, and went on as if there had been no break. Marmaduke had shrunk into his chair like a man who had received a heavy blow, his very passion was too weak to support him at this crisis, he scarcely heard the formal words running on in set rounded phrases: what he did hear at last was Mr Miles asking,—
“Is there no mention whatever of Miss Harford in the will?”
“There is nothing more than you have heard me read,” said Mr Pitt, in his dry voice.
The name seemed to recall Marmaduke’s senses, and a rush of rage stimulated him to burst out again,—
“It is false, and a lie! Anthony has taken advantage of his dotage. I will dispute every word of it.”