“Genius like yours, sir, may expect anything—and get it!” said the publisher sententiously. “There is no poet before you, Mr. Lancaster, to-day—not one! Do you care to take the check with you now, or....”
“I suppose I may as well,” said Philip.
Some transactions were gone through with; Philip never remembered what they were. At last he found himself, as if by magic, at the door of the house in Hammersmith, with eleven hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket. He threw open the door of the sitting-room and strode in.
He had forgotten all about the reading of the will. There was Mr. Fillmore, with the document in his hand, just reading out the words—“I give and bequeath to Marion Lockhart”—and there was Marion, with a startled and troubled look in her eyes.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE words which Philip had heard, and the shock of surprise which they gave him, combined with the unexpectedness of the whole scene in Mrs. Lockhart’s little sitting-room, rendered obscure his perception of what immediately followed. By-and-by, however, two or three of the persons present took their departure, and then Philip found himself alone with Fillmore, Mrs. Lockhart and Marion. The latter had already received the congratulations of the company, to which she had replied little or nothing.
“My dear daughter,” now exclaimed Mrs. Lockhart, with gentle fervor, “what a splendid surprise! To think I should have lived to see you a great heiress! Twenty thousand pounds did you say, Mr. Fillmore? To think of Mr. Grant’s—Mr. Grantley’s having been so rich! He was so quiet and simple. What a noble thing to do! But he was the son of Tom Grantley, you know, and Lady Edith Seabridge was his mother. And oh! Philip, how happy you and Marion will be now!”
“I think we should have been that at any rate,” said Philip, smiling at Marion, and conscious of eleven hundred pounds of his own in his pocket.
“Yes; at least as happy,” said Marion, in a low voice.
“I had not been aware,” observed Fillmore, with a slight bow, “that Mr. Lancaster was to be congratulated as well as Miss Lockhart.”