“I should not like to trust too much to that,” said Mr. Fazakerly, shaking his head. “And then there is your sister. Miss Clare loses by this as much as you do. Of course now the entail stands as if you had never taken any steps in the matter, and Old Arden is hers no longer. Are you aware that, supposing her fully provided for by that most iniquitous bequest, your father left her nothing else? She will be a beggar as well as you.”
“You don’t mean it!” cried Edgar, with a flush of warm colour rushing over his face. “Say that again! You don’t really mean it? Why, then, I shall have Clare to work for, and I don’t envy the king, much less the proprietor of Arden. Shake hands! you have made me twice the man I was. My sister is my sister still, and, after all, I am not alone in the world.”
Mr. Fazakerly looked at the young man aghast. He said to himself, “There must be madness in the family,” not recollecting that nothing in the family could much affect Edgar, who did not belong to it. He sat with a certain helpless amazement looking at him, watching how the life rose in his face. He had been very weary, very pale, before, but this news, as it were, rekindled him, and gave him all his energy back.
“I thought it did not matter much what became of me,” he said, with a certain joyous ring in his voice, which stupified the old lawyer. “But it does matter now. What is it, Wilkins? What do you want?”
“Please, sir, Lady Augusta Thornleigh and the young ladies is come to call,” said Wilkins. “I’d have shown them into the drawing-room, but Mr. Arthur Arden he’s in the drawing-room. Shall they come here?”
Edgar’s countenance paled again as suddenly as it had grown bright. His face was like a glass, on which all his emotions showed. “They must want to see my sister,” he said, with a certain longing and wistfulness in his tone.
“It was you, sir, as my lady asked for, not Miss Arden. It’s the second one of the young ladies as is with her—Miss Augusta I think they calls her, sir,” said Wilkins, not without some curiosity. “They said special as they didn’t want to see no strangers—only you.”
Edgar rose up once more, his face glowing crimson, his eyes wet and full. “Wherever they please—wherever they please,” he said half to himself, with a confused thrill of happiness and emotion. “I am at their orders.” He did not know what he expected. His heart rose as if it had wings. They had come to seek him. Was not he receiving compensation, more than compensation, for all his pain?
But before he could give any orders, before Mr. Fazakerly could gather up his papers, or even offer to go away, Lady Augusta herself appeared at the open door.