‘It’s kind of you to add that much,’ said Lord Will, who had stopped in his amusement of knocking about the balls, which he had been doing savagely, to stare in a threatening way at his friend. Then he threw down the cue and began to walk up and down the hall. ‘Swinford,’ he said after a while, coming back to the table, ‘do you know that is, I believe, exactly what I was intended to do? I knew it in a kind of a way, but I never put it into words. I believe they thought she might have been put off with a thousand pounds or two, as if it had been a legacy.’
‘But your lawyers—I suppose they have a character to lose—would not have consented.’
‘Oh! there’s no saying what lawyers will consent to when they’re on your side. I note what you say, about having characters to lose. I suppose you think that we—haven’t much, perhaps.’
‘I did not mean that,’ said Leo briefly.
‘Well, perhaps you will now—but that would be a mistake. We’re none of us lawyers. Don’t you know that people sometimes take up an idea that looks quite allowable until you put it into words? Here’s a woman living quite by herself in a corner, wanting very little money. And the governor, you know, has been making her an allowance all this time. What can she want with a lot of money like that? It would only worry her, make her think, perhaps, she could set up in a different way of living, and bring her to grief in the end. And she as good as owes the family her allowance all these years, which my father wasn’t any way compelled to give. D’ye see? Well, it doesn’t sound very high-minded, I allow, but it’s very plausible. It would be no end of use to us—fifty thousand pounds, or say forty-five with five thousand or so off to her——’
‘Oh! you mean to be so liberal as that!’
‘By Jove! don’t drive me to it, or I may—— Look here, don’t let’s quarrel, Swinford. It’s so caddish. I never thought of the business, I tell you, from your point of view. It sounds very plausible. It’s quite possible the lawyers wouldn’t have stood it; I don’t know. They never thought of the law, nor that she had any natural right, don’t you see, to old John’s money. They knew very well he would never have left it to her, when he knew how heavily the governor was dipped and all that. I fail to see even now what harm there was in it. The allowance, of course, would be continued, and five thousand pounds is as much to a woman living like that, as fifty is at home. It would have been an enormous windfall; that is what my mo—I mean what my people thought.’
Leo Swinford had a mind which was very tolerant, and he wanted of course, now he had calmed down a little, to make the best of it. He nodded his head, and said: ‘I allow that perhaps it was plausible; but I presume it would be felony all the same.’
‘Felony,’ said the other with a stare of astonishment—the word seemed to puzzle him. ‘The governor is the head of the family,’ he said vaguely, which somehow seemed a reason.
‘It would be defrauding one of the heirs of an intestate person of her just share. The heir would be Mab, I suppose, not her mother.’