Mr. Loseby took off his spectacles, which had been twinkling and glittering upon his forehead like a second pair of eyes—this was a very strong step, denoting unusual excitement—and wiped them deliberately while he looked at Rose. He had the idea, which was not a just idea, that either Rose had been exercising her fascinations upon her sister’s lover, or that she had been in her turn fascinated by him. ‘You saw a good deal of Mr. Douglas in town?’ he said, looking at her keenly, always polishing his spectacles; but Rose sustained the gaze without shrinking.
‘Oh, a great deal,’ she said; ‘he went everywhere with us. He was very nice to mamma and me. Still I do not care a bit about him if he behaves badly to Anne; but he ought not to be let off—he ought to be made to marry her. I told him—what I was quite ready to do——’
‘And what are you quite ready to do, if one might know?’ Mr. Loseby was savage. His grin at her was full of malice and all uncharitableness.
‘Oh, you know very well!’ cried Rose, ‘it was you first who said—— Will you tell me one thing, Mr. Loseby,’ she ran on, her countenance changing; ‘what does it mean by the will of 1868?’
‘What does what mean?’ The old lawyer was roused instantly. It was not that he divined anything, but his quick instinct forestalled suspicion, and there suddenly gleamed over him a consciousness that there was something to divine.
‘Oh!—I mean,’ said Rose, correcting herself quickly, ‘what is meant by the will of 1868? I think I ought to know.’
Mr. Loseby eyed her more and more closely. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘how you know that there was a will of 1868?’
But there was nothing in his aspect to put Rose on her guard. ‘I think I ought to know,’ she said, ‘but I am always treated like a child. And if things were to turn round again, and everything to go back, and me never to have any good of it, I wonder what would be the use at all of having made any change?’
Mr. Loseby put on his spectacles again. He wore a still more familiar aspect when he had his two spare eyes pushed up from his forehead, ready for use at a moment’s notice. He was on the verge of a discovery, but he did not know as yet what that discovery would be.
‘That is very true,’ he said; ‘and it shows a great deal of sense on your part: for if everything were to turn round it would certainly be no use at all to have made any change. The will of 1868 is the will that was made directly after your father married for the second time; it was made to secure her mother’s fortune to your sister Anne.’