Then they looked at each other without a word. Clare’s great blue eyes, dilated with grief and wonder, and two big tears which filled them to overflowing, were fixed upon her brother’s face. But she had no elucidation to give. She only put out her hands to him, and took his, and held it close, with that instinctive impulse to tender touch and contact which is more than words. She followed her brother with her eyes while he faced this new wonder. “Well,” he was saying to himself, “of course you must have known he meant something by breaking the entail. Of course it was not for your sake he did it. What could it be for? You never asked—never thought. Of course it could only be to take it from you. And why not give it to Clare? If not to you, of course it must go to Clare; and but for that she could not have had it. It is very well that it should be so. It is best; is it not best?” Thus he reasoned according to his nature, while Clare sat watching him with wistful dilated eyes. While he calmed himself down she was rousing herself. Her agitation rose to the intolerable pitch, while his was slowly coming down to moderation and composure. The sudden cloud floated away from him, and the light came back to his eyes. “I begin to see it,” he said slowly. “Don’t be vexed, Clare, that I did not see it all at once. It is not that I grudge you anything; he might have given you all, and I don’t think I should have grudged it. It is the mistrust—the preference. It is so strange. One wonders what it can mean.”
“Yes,” said Clare, impulsively, “I wonder too. But, more than that, Edgar; you did not know—you did it in ignorance; and I will never, never, take advantage of that! I was bewildered at first; but it is your right, and I will never take it from you——”
Then it was he, who had been robbed of his birthright, who had to exert himself to reconcile her to his loss. “Nay, that is nonsense,” he said. “It is done, and it cannot be done over again. The will must not be interfered with: it is my business to see to that. No, Clare; don’t try to make me do wrong. Nothing we can say will change it, nor anything you can do either. What has been given you is yours, and yours it must remain.”
“But I will not accept it,” said Clare; “I will give it all back the moment I come of age. What! rob you and your children, Edgar—all the Ardens that may come after you! That is what I will never do.”
“It is time enough to think of the Ardens who may come after me,” said Edgar, with an attempt at a laugh. But Clare was not to be pacified so easily. He drew closer to her side, and sat down by her, and took her hand, and spoke softly in her ear, arguing it out as if the question had not been a personal one. “It startled me at first,” he said; “it was strange, very strange, that he should think of taking this, as you say, Clare, not only from me, but from all the Ardens to come; but then you were the dearest to him, and that was quite natural. And it must have been my fault that he did not tell me. I never asked any questions about it—never thought of inquiring. He must have taken me for a kind of Esau, careless of what was going to happen. If I had shown a little more interest, no doubt he would have told me. Of course, he must have felt it would have been for your advantage had I known all about it, and been able to stand by you. I am so glad you have told me now. You may be sure he would have done so had I behaved myself properly. So, you see, it was my fault, Clare. I must have been ungracious, boorish, indifferent. It is clear it was my fault.”
“Mr. Fazakerley, sir, is in the library,” said Wilkins, opening the door. There was a certain breath of agitation in the air about the two young people which the servants had scented out; and the eager eyes of Wilkins expressed not only his own curiosity, but that of the household in general. “He was a patting of her and a smoothing of her down,” was the butler’s report downstairs, “and Miss Clare in one of her ways. I daresay they have quarrelled already, for she is her father’s daughter, is Miss Clare.” The brother and sister were quite unconscious of this comment; but though they had not quarrelled, the conflict of feeling had risen so high that Mr. Fazakerley’s arrival was a relief to both. “I must go and see him,” Edgar said, loosing his sister’s hand, and laying his own tenderly upon her bowed head. “Don’t let it trouble you so much. You will see it as I do when you think of it rightly, Clare.”
“Never!” Clare cried among her tears. Edgar shook his head, with a soft smile, as he went away. Of course, she would come to see it. Reason and simple sense must gain the day at last. So he thought, feeling perfectly persuaded that such were his own leading principles—calm reason and sober sense. Edgar rather prided himself upon their possession; and thus fortified with a conviction of what were the leading characteristics of his own mind, went to meet the family lawyer, and hear all about it in a sober and business-like way.
CHAPTER VII.
Mr. Fazakerley was a little brown man, with a wig—a man who might have appeared on any stage as the conventional type of a crafty solicitor. He was very much like a fox, with little keen red-brown eyes, and whiskers which were grizzled, yet still retained the reddish colour of youth. His wig, too, was reddish-brown, and might have been made out of a foxskin, so true was it to the colour and texture of that typical animal. As may be divined from the fact of his outward appearance, he was not in the very least like a fox or a conventional solicitor, but was a good, little, kind, respectable sort of man, chiefly distinguished for his knowledge of Lancashire families—their intermarriages, and the division of their properties and value of their land; on which points he was an infallible guide. He came forward to meet the young Squire with both his hands extended, and a smile beaming out of every wrinkle of his brown face. “Welcome home, Mr. Edgar,” he said; “welcome home, welcome to your own house,” with a warmth and effusion which betrayed that there was more than the usual occasion for such a welcome. He shook the young man’s hand so long, and so energetically, swaying it between both of his, that Edgar felt as if it must come off. “You don’t remember me, I can see,” said Mr. Fazakerley. “I never happened to be at home while you were at Arden; but I know you well, and how nobly you have behaved. So you must think of me as your old friend, and one always ready to serve you—me and everybody belonging to me—you must indeed.”
“Thanks,” said Edgar, taken by surprise; “a thousand thanks. I never knew how rich I was in friends till now. Clare has just been telling me I ought to have known you all my life.”