“Fact!” ejaculated Gomer.
“By what magic has it been accomplished?” inquired Grahame, apparently stupefied by what he heard.
“No magic at all,” returned Nathan Gomer, grinning. “A simple process of law. Years ago a near relative, named Eglinton, a connection of your own, gave to him an estate”——
“Which the law took from him, exposing a trumped up”——
“Gently, Mr. Grahame, be careful what you say until you have heard more. When our tongues run away with us, we have sometimes occasion to lament the want of a curb. This estate was taken from him by the Court of Chancery, because he failed only to produce the attesting witness.”
“Tush! the witness was a fiction, an imaginary person, who”——
Has recently returned from India, a colonel in the East India Service, and sufficiently tangible to satisfy the law. This officer has not only sworn to the genuineness of the deed of gift, but has proved its validity, by giving information of the existence of a duplicate lodged by Eglinton himself in the hands of a solicitor long since retired from practice. This has been produced, attested to the satisfaction of the Chancellor, and the estate, together with the large arrears accumulated, are in the process of being restored to “Wilton.”
Mr. Grahame listened in grim silence. He felt choking, with spite and envy. The man he had pressed to the verge of despair, in the hope to compel him to sign away his birthright, was now immeasurably his superior in position as he was his equal in descent. He would be a formidable antagonist to fight with the miserable deed he had forged. He could not dare to attempt it.
He fell back in his chair with a groan. Nathan Gomer had brought him ill news indeed. He had expected foul tidings, yet not such as this. He could have wept scalding tears of bitterness, vexation, and rage. He bit his white and trembling lips, and exerting himself to control his tremulous voice, he said—
“It is to give me this information you have waited upon me, Mr. Gomer, I suppose, and with no other object?” The misty shapes dancing before his eyes began to take the distinct form of a pistol with which he had resolved to anticipate the thunderbolt hovering over to crush him.