'—Your name, if you please, sir?—Mr. Richmond Roy.—We are sorry we have orders not to admit you. And they declined; they would not admit me to see my son.'
'Those must be the squire's old orders,' I said, and shouted to the lodge-keeper.
My father, with the forethoughtfulness which never forsook him, stopped me.
'No, Richie, no; the good woman shall not have the responsibility of letting me in against orders; she may be risking her place, poor soul! Help me, dear lad.'
He climbed the bars to the spikes, tottering, and communicating a convulsion to me as I assisted him in the leap down: no common feat for one of his age and weight.
He leaned on me, quaking.
'Impossible! Richie, impossible!' he cried, and reviewed a series of interjections.
It was some time before I discovered that they related to the Will. He was frenzied, and raved, turning suddenly from red to pale under what I feared were redoubtable symptoms, physical or mental. He came for sight of the Will; he would contest it, overthrow it. Harry ruined? He would see Miss Beltham and fathom the plot;—angel, he called her, and was absurdly exclamatory, but in dire earnest. He must have had the appearance of a drunken man to persons observing him from the Grange windows.
My father was refused admission at the hall-doors.
The butler, the brute Sillabin, withstood me impassively.