Ten minutes later an excited young man rushed into an office in the K---- building. Two minutes afterward he was laying the case before that distinguished old counsellor, Judge Abner Garrett.
"You will have to fight it jointly," said Judge Garrett, after extracting the wheat from the chaff of Browne's remarks. "You can't take hers away from her and she can't get yours. We must combine against the natives. Come back to-morrow at two."
Promptly at two Browne appeared, eager-eyed and nervous. He had left behind him at home a miserable young woman with red eyes and choking breath who bemoaned the cruel conviction that she stood between him and fortune.
"But hang it all, dearest, I wouldn't marry that girl if I had the chance. I'd marry you all over again to-day if I could," he had cried out to her, but she wondered all afternoon if he really meant it. It never entered her head to wonder if Lady Deppingham was old or young, pretty or ugly, bright or dull. She had been Mrs. Browne for three months and she could not quite understand how she had been so happy up to this sickening hour.
Judge Garrett had a copy of the will in his hand. He looked dubious, even dismayed.
"It's as sound as the rock of Gibraltar," he announced dolefully.
"You don't mean it!" gasped poor Bobby, mopping his fine Harvard brow, his six feet of manhood shrinking perceptibly as he looked about for a chair in which to collapse. "C—can't it be smashed?"
"It might be an easy matter to prove either of these old gentlemen to have been insane, but the two of them together make it out of the question----"
"Darned unreasonable."
"What do you mean, sir?" indignantly.