A loud, insulting "Ha! ha! ha!" burst from Captain Brand.
The harsh, grating laughter, eloquent with scorn, devilish with malice, incredulity, and fury, turned the girl's outraged protest into speechlessness.
She wrapped her long crape garments about her hands, and the beautiful figure of Margaret Walsingham—her one charm, and a perfection it was—vanished from the incensed eyes of St. Udo Brand.
"Well, what think you of woman's wit after this?" cried he to the executors when the door had closed. "Who says a woman can't scheme, and cleverly, too? What fool ever called hers the softest sex?"
"I must request of you, as the executor of this will," said Mr. Davenport, slapping it loudly, "is bound to do—to apologize to the young lady whom you have just now insulted, for your treatment of her."
The captain's magnificent eyes were blazing with anger, and his brow was contracted with the scowl of a baffled demon, but at the plucky lawyer's proposition, he threw back his head and burst into another shout of laughter that made the ceiling ring again.
"What! trust my unwary heart to the red-hot fingers of a Torquemada? She would dissect it leisurely for its vulnerable spot, and probe that with spiteful blade. It needed not my insults, as you call them, to turn her venom against me. Did I not read it in the loathing eyes and shrinking figure before ever I opened my mouth? Am not I the one obstacle between her and the fortune she has lain in wait for during four years? She can afford to take insults from me; they will not hurt her. They are my tribute to her talent as a fortune-hunter."
"I must disabuse your mind of all unjust suspicions against Miss Walsingham," cried Mr. Davenport, meeting the captain's frowning eyes with as fierce a frown; "she has never schemed for this disposition of your grandmother's property. On the contrary, to my extreme surprise and disapprobation, she vehemently implored that she might be left out of the will altogether, and sent for me an hour before Mrs. Brand's decease, hoping that you might arrive in time to prevail upon Mrs. Brand to revoke the clauses concerning her."
"Save me these rhapsodies, friend," returned the captain; "those heavenly qualities to which you direct my lover-like regards, but whet my appetite like that of the ravening wolf. Let me make a mouthful of my bliss; but I warn all officious fingers to keep out of my pie."
"You mean by that, I suppose, that you will submit to the conditions of the will?"