“I’m afraid it will.” This came very tartly.
“Er. . . . Sorry.”
That had flicked Robert on the raw. He had been feeling indulgent toward his demented brother until his more than doubtful attitude toward ten thousand pounds. When that was followed with the renunciation of golf he was genuinely distressed and went away muttering behind his mustache:
“I give it up. I give it up. ’Pon my honor. Non compos, don’t y’know, non compos.”
Nothing would induce Old Mole to visit Thrigsby again, and his solicitor had to send a clerk down with documents for his signature. When all the legal threads were tied up he told Matilda the extent of his fortune, and how he had been asked to return to his position at the school.
“Are you sorry?” she asked.
“No.”
“You sha’n’t ever be, for me. Will you read to me now?”
And he read the first two acts of “King Lear.”
“That isn’t the play you were reading the other day. The one about Venice and the man who was such a good soldier.”