Though owner of the old house he hardly knew it. It was twenty years since he had let it to Mr. Churchill, and he had not seen it since. He filled up his time, while waiting for the solicitor from York, in wandering through the rambling old rooms. Most of them were low and dimly lighted, with heavy mullioned windows and wainscoted walls; but there was a charm about them which no modern mansion can possess. All of them were poorly and barely furnished with the mere necessaries of household life. There were no curtains to the windows, and no carpets on the floors, which looked as if they had been seldom cleaned. His footsteps echoed loudly through the nearly empty rooms; and he found nowhere any trace of wealth or refinement, except in the library, which was well furnished with books. There were only two servants—an elderly man and his wife. The large garden surrounding the house had become a wilderness, where the old gravel walks were scarcely to be traced.
"The little girl will be poor," Sidney said to himself, "but Margaret will care the more for her if she has nothing."
As the morning passed on the solicitor arrived, eager to get through his business and catch a return train, which would take him back that evening. He ran rapidly through the will, which left everything in Sidney's hands.
"You see you have absolute power," he said; "it is the simplest will in the world. His only daughter sole heiress, and you sole executor. No relations, no legacies, no conditions."
"He must have been an odd man," remarked Sidney.
"Very odd indeed," he replied, "very odd! Has not spent £200 a year over and above his rent since he came to this place. No, I'm wrong! since his wife left him, when their child was about two years of age. Ran away, you understand, and providentially died a few months afterward. The girl has grown up quite untaught and uncared for. She will be eighteen soon, and looks and acts like a child of twelve. A serious thing that, with her fortune."
"Fortune!" repeated Sidney. "I judged them to be poor."
"About a quarter of a million, more or less," said the solicitor; "and she has never been trusted to spend a sixpence in her life. Poor Churchill professed to hate her, as being like her mother; but you see he could not disinherit her. Curious instinct that in human nature to leave one's possessions to one's own flesh and blood. We seldom find it contravened."
"But there is no trace of wealth about the house," suggested Sidney.
"Churchill sold off all his wife's knickknacks when she ran away," he replied, "and kept nothing but necessaries. He has lived here with two servants and a host of dogs. By the way, the dogs are to attend the funeral as far as the churchyard gates; the rector will not allow them inside. We fixed the funeral for to-morrow, and I will run over to it; and then we can arrange any further matters of business."