"I am awfully sorry," exclaimed Mr. Blount, throwing himself into a chair in undisguised despondency. "The will, as it was drafted, would have provided splendidly for Miss Ethel Ware, and left you, Mr. Marston, an annuity of two thousand five hundred a year, and a sum of five thousand pounds. For two or three years I had been urging him to execute it; it is evident he never did. He has destroyed the draft, instead of executing it. That hope is quite gone—totally."
Mr. Blount stood up and said, laying his hand upon his forehead, "I am grieved—I am shocked—I am profoundly grieved."
Mr. Marston was strongly tempted to tell Mr. Blount what he thought of him. Jarlcot and he, no doubt, understood one another, and had intended making a nice thing of it.
He could not smile, nor even sneer, just then, but Mr. Marston fixed on Lemuel Blount a sidelong look of the sternest contempt.
"There is, then," said Mr. Blount, collecting himself, "no will."
"That seems pretty clear," said Mr. Marston, with, in spite of himself, a cold scorn in his tone. "I think so; and I rather fancy you think so too."
"Except this," continued Mr. Blount, producing a paper from his pocket, at which he had been fumbling. "Mr. Jarlcot will hand you a copy. I urged him, God knows how earnestly, to revoke it. It was made at the period of his greatest displeasure with you; it leaves everything to Miss Ethel Ware, and gives you, I grieve to say, but an annuity of four hundred a year. It appoints me guardian to the young lady, in the same terms that the latter will would have done, and leaves me, besides, an annuity of five hundred a year, half of which I shall, if you don't object, make over to you."
"Oh! oh! a will! That's all right," said Marston, trying to smile with lips that had grown white; "I, of course, you—we all wish nothing but what is right and fair."
Mr. Jarlcot handed him a new neatly-folded paper, endorsed "Copy of the Will of the late Sir Harry Rokestone, Bart." Richard Marston took it with a hand that trembled, a hand that had not often trembled before.
"Then, I suppose, Mr. Blount, you will look in on me, by-and-by, to arrange about the steps to be taken about proving it," said Mr. Jarlcot.