The heiress sat quietly by the side of her friend Lawrence Newt. She was holding the hand of Mrs. Simcoe, who glanced sometimes at Lawrence, calmly, and with no sign of regretful or revengeful remembrance. The Honorable Budlong Dinks was walking up and down the room, stroking his chin with his hand, not without a curiously vague indignation with the late lamented proprietor of Pinewood.
It was a strange spectacle. A room full of living men and women who had just heard what some of them considered their doom pronounced by a dead man. They had carried him out of his house, cold, powerless, screwed into the casket. They had laid him in the ground beneath the village spire, and yet it was his word that troubled, enraged, disappointed, surprised, and envenomed them. Beyond their gratitude, reproaches, taunts, or fury, he lay helpless and dumb—yet the most terrible and inaccessible of despots.
The conversation was cool and indifferent. The legal gentlemen moved about with a professional and indifferent air, as if they assisted at such an occasion as medical students at dissections. It was in the way of business. As Mr. Quiddy, the confidential counsel of the late lamented Mr. Burt, looked at Mrs. Alfred Dinks, he remarked to Mr. Baze, a younger member of the bar, anxious to appear well in the eyes of Quiddy, that it was a pity the friends of deceased parties permitted their disappointments to overpower them upon these occasions. Saying which, Mr. Quiddy waved his forefinger in the air, while Mr. Baze, in a deferential manner and tone, answered, Certainly, because they could not help themselves. There was no getting round a will drawn as that will was—here a slight bow to Mr. Quiddy, who had drawn the will, was interpolated—and if people didn’t like what they got, they had better grin and bear it. Mr. Quiddy further remarked, with the forefinger still wandering in the air as if restlessly seeking for some argument to point, that the silver shoe-buckles which had so long been identified with the quaint costume of Mr. Burt, would be a very pretty and interesting heir-loom in the family of young Mr. Dinks.
Upon which the eminent confidential counsel took snuff, and while he flirted the powder from his fingers looked at his young friend Baze.
Young Mr. Baze said, “Very interesting!” and continued the attitude of listening for further wisdom from his superior.
Lawrence Newt meanwhile had narrowly watched his niece Fanny. Nobody else cared to approach her; but he went over to her presently.
“Well, Fanny.”
“Well, Uncle Lawrence.”
“Beautiful place, Fanny.”
“Is it?”