“That is all, Colonel Piercey, every word. The house, estates, money, everything. Even the servants are cut out. He said she’d look after them. Mrs. Piercey takes everything—house, lands, money, plate, everything. It is a very unusual and surprising will, but that is all.”
And then there was another pause, and a general deep-drawn breath.
“It is a very surprising will indeed,” said Lord Hartmore.
It was a sort of remark to himself, forced from him by the astonishment of the moment; but in the silence of the room it sounded as if addressed like an oration to all who were there.
“Pardon me,” cried Colonel Piercey, “but Greyshott? Do you mean that Greyshott, the original home of the family——?”
“I represented that to Sir Giles, but he would hear nothing. It is Mrs. Piercey’s with all the rest.”
“It is the most iniquitous thing I ever heard,” cried Lady Hartmore, rising quickly to her feet. “What! not a word of anybody belonging to him, nothing of Meg and her boy, nothing of his natural heirs, nothing of old Dunning even, and the old servants?—The man must have been mad.”
Here Patty rose and advanced to the conflict. She was very nervous, but collected. “Mr. Pownceby can bear me witness that I knew nothing about it,” she said. “I wasn’t there.”
“No, you were not there,” said the lawyer.
“I thought it right I should have a provision,” said Patty, “and so it was right; and if my dear father-in-law thought that the one that stood by him, and nursed him through all his illness, when everybody else forsook him, was the one that ought to have it, who’s got anything to say against that? I didn’t want it; but now that I’ve got it, I’ll stick to it,” cried Patty defiantly, confronting Lady Hartmore, who had been the only one to speak.