Philip who had never loved him, continued the old man's tremulously written confession, was gone he knew not where, beyond all trace, so that rumour even said he was dead; and to denounce himself then as the possessor of the second will, was to cut away the ground from under his own feet, when on the very eve of marriage with a girl, whose family would not permit her to marry a penniless younger son—so he had deemed himself thus not intentionally guilty, and that no one's interests suffered by his silence.
If he had followed the dictates of the highest principles, he would at once have made the document known; but where was Philip? As time went on Patrick Ruthven became conscience-struck, and he now charged Roland with the task of making some amends if possible, by discovering the lost man or his heirs, if lie had any.
A bitter bequest indeed!
With a painfully throbbing heart, and hands that trembled, Roland laid the documents down and strove to collect his thoughts. The first dull and stunning emotion, of confusion and unreality past, he looked dreamily around him to see if he was not undergoing a species of nightmare; but no! There was the stately old dining-hall, the spacious Scottish fireplace with its silver fire-dogs, and here were the ebony cabinet of Scindia, with the suppressed will, and the signed confession of his father.
It was a terrible shock to Roland Ruthven to find that his father—his father of all men in the world!—whom through all the years of his life he had looked up to with love and reverence, and who seemed ever to him and to all who knew him, the model of chivalrous honour, should have acted thus, and he actually wept over the event!
Again and again he read the confession that on one hand Philip had never loved him, had exasperated the general; and on the other, there was the chance—nay, the certainty—of a marriage being marred by the production of the will which was now dated nearly forty years back.
"Justice must be done, at all risks and hazards—but justice to whom?" thought Roland.
Ardgowrie seemed no longer his; as if touched by an enchanter's wand, it seemed already to have passed away, wood, wold, and mountain, by this cruel discovery. He felt homeless in a splendid home, his worldly prospects ruined, and Aurelia Darnel, the only girl he had ever loved, utterly lost to him!
Why not destroy the will?
But no—oh no! Roland felt his cheek crimson, as something seemed to whisper of this in his ear, and then he recalled his dead father's remorseful injunctions to himself.