"Then what are the contents of the paper?"
"Merely that you make over to your brother the whole of the £500 per annum left you by your father, with all your right, title, and interest therein."
Derval was astounded and bewildered not at his own folly and simplicity, but by the systematic baseness of his brother.
"Oh, wretch!" he exclaimed; "was it not enough to rob me of all, even my poor patrimony? but to seek to rob me too of Clara, my affianced wife!"
For a few moments his emotions were stifling, and he gasped rather than breathed.
"I must own," said Mr. De Murrer, "that when the post brought this singular document, signed by you, and witnessed by Rookleigh, the framer of it, illegally expressed and on unstamped paper, I was sorely puzzled; but, luckily, it is every way valueless."
"Save in so far as revealing the perfidy of which he is capable—the double villain!"
"While searching your father's papers for documents in connection with the peerage affair, I came upon one which completely alters all your affairs, and that I shall show you in time," said Mr. De Murrer.
"He need no longer now pretend to act in my interests in pressing on the peerage case, and not a moment must be lost in freeing my poor Clara from the trammels—the evil of mental misery—by which he has surrounded her."
"Good, good!" said the little lawyer, rubbing his hands. "The contract and the settlements won't be signed, after all, and may go with Rookleigh's document into the waste-paper basket. But I was due with them at Lord Oakhampton's an hour ago—a hansom will take us there in half that time; and now, my dear Derval, let us be off!"