Grey started, and looking across the table, saw the stranger advancing towards Miss Midharst.
The banker threw one glance around, by which he plainly told the other men that he intended resenting so unwarrantable an intrusion on the grief and privacy of the occasion. All his fears had vanished into air. The only feeling he now experienced was that a pushing stranger was seeking to occupy the unwilling attention of his legally constituted ward, and the woman who was to be his wife.
Grey crossed the room rapidly at the back of the vacant chair, and placing himself beside Miss Midharst, bowed and offered her his arm.
She took it, and for a second no one moved.
Maud looked up and saw in front of her a tall, broad, dark-visaged, black-haired, sad-featured man, with dark and dreamy eyes.
She shrank back slightly, and clung to the stalwart arm on which her small white hand lay.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the banker blandly, "I shall be happy to place myself at your disposal when I have led Miss Midharst to her private apartment. May I request you to take a seat until then?"
"Thank you, sir. Your name is Grey."
"It is. And as you have heard the will, you know I am in a position to tell you that anything you have to say to Miss Midharst may, under present circumstances, be more reasonably said to me." The banker advanced his foot, and Maud, still clinging to him, moved to go.
Again the stranger bowed low to Miss Midharst. It was impossible, without downright rudeness, for Grey to move until the stranger should have recovered an erect attitude, as evidently there was something else he wished to say.