“And that is, to go out!” Audley said. “Well, make that quite clear to them, Stubbs, and depend upon it—they’ll see differently.”
“I’m afraid they won’t, my lord, and that is why I trouble you. They voted against the last lord—twice, I am told—and the story goes that he laid his stick about Ben Bosham’s shoulders in the street—that would be in ’31, I fancy. But he didn’t turn them out—they’d been in the holding so long.”
“Two votes may have been nothing to him,” Audley replied coldly. “They are something to me. They will vote for Mottisfont or they will go, Stubbs. That is flat, and do you see to it. There, I’m tired now,” he continued, rising from his seat.
Stubbs rose. “I don’t know if your lordship’s heard about Mr. John’s will!”
“No!” My lord straightened himself. Earlier in the day he had given some thought to this, and had weighed Mary Audley’s chances of inheriting what John Audley had. “No!” he said. And he waited.
“He has left the young lady eight thousand pounds.”
“Eight thousand!” Audley ejaculated. “Do you mean—he must have had more than that? He wasted a small fortune in that confounded suit. But he must have had—four times that, man!”
“The residue goes to Mr. Basset.”
“Basset!” Audley cried, his face flushed with passion. “To Basset?” he repeated. “Good G—d!”
“So I’m told, my lord,” the lawyer answered, staggered by the temper in which his employer received the news.