“Oh, hang reason!” cried the young man with excitement. “I understand all that. What’s to be done? that seems the main thing. Who is this certain person that has a better right to Melmar than we?”
“Tell me first what you would do if you knew,” said Mr. Huntley, bending his red gray eyes intently upon his son. Melmar knew that there were generous young fools in the world, who would not hesitate to throw fortune and living to the winds for the sake of something called honor and justice. He had but little acquaintance with his son; he did not know what stuff Oswald was made of. He thought it just possible that the spirit of such Quixotes might animate this elegant mass of good breeding and dillettanteism; for which reason he sat watching under his grizzled, bushy eyebrows, with the intensest looks of those fiery eyes.
“Pshaw! do? You don’t suppose I would be likely to yield to any one without a struggle. Who is it?” said Oswald; “let me know plainly what you mean.”
“It is the late Me’mar’s daughter and only child; a woman with children; a woman in poor circumstances,” replied Mr. Huntley, still with a certain dry sarcasm in his voice.
“But she was disinherited?” said Oswald, eagerly.
“Her father left a will in her favor,” said Melmar, “reinstating her fully in her natural rights; that will is in the hands of our enemies, whom the old fool left his heirs, failing his daughter: she and her children, and these young men, are ready to pounce upon the estate.”
“But she was lost—did I not hear so?” cried Oswald, rising from his chair in overpowering excitement.
“Ay!” said his father, “but I know where she is.”
“In Heaven’s name, what do you mean?” cried the unfortunate young man; “is it to bewilder and overwhelm me that you tell me all this? Have we no chance? Are we mere impostors? Is all this certain and beyond dispute? What do you mean?”
“It is all certain,” said Melmar, steadily; “her right is unquestionable; she has heirs of her own blood, and I know where she is—she can turn us out of house and home to-morrow—she can make me a poor writer, ruined past redemption, and you a useless fine gentleman, fit for nothing in this world that I know of, and your sisters servant-maids, for I don’t know what else they’re good for. All this she can do, Oswald Huntley, and more than this, the moment she makes her appearance—but she is as ignorant as you were half an hour ago. I know—but she does not know.”