"'What?' cried the old man sharply. 'How was that?'
"'I was intending,' Llewellyn began lamely, 'to settle----'
"'You were intending!' Robert Evans burst forth in a voice so changed that they all started back. 'You are a liar! You were intending to settle nothing! I know it well! I knew it long ago! Nothing, I say! As for you,' he went on, wheeling furiously round upon the Evanses of Nant, 'you knew my wishes. What were you going to do for her? What, I say? Speak, you hobbledehoys!'
"For they were backing from him in absolute fear of his passion, looking at one another or at the sullen face of Llewellyn Evans, or anywhere save at him. At length the eldest blurted out, 'Whatever Llewellyn meant to do we were going to do, sir.'
"'You speak the truth there,' cried old Robert bitterly; 'for that was nothing, you know. Very well! I promise you that what Llewellyn gets of my property you shall get too--and it will be nothing! You, Bevan,' and he turned himself toward the Evan Bevans, who were shaking in their shoes, 'I am told, did offer to do something for my girl.'
"'Yes, dear Robert,' cried Mrs. Bevan, radiant and eager, 'we did indeed.'
"'So I hear. Well, when I make my next will, I will take care to set you down for just so much as you proposed to give her! Peggy, bach,' he continued, turning from the chapfallen lady, and putting into the girl's hands the will which the lawyer had given him, 'tear up this rubbish! Tear it up! Now let us have something to eat in the other room. What, Llewellyn, no appetite?'
"But the family did not stay even to partake of the home-brewed. They were out of the house, I am told, before the coffin and the undertaker's men. There was big talking among them, as they went, of a conspiracy and a lunatic asylum. But though, to be sure, it was a wonderful recovery, and the doctor and Mr. Hughes, as they drove away after dinner, were very friendly together--which may have been only the home-brewed--at any rate the sole outcome of Llewellyn's talking and inquiries was that everyone laughed very much, and Robert Evans' name for a clever man was known beyond Carnarvon.
"Of course it would be open house at Court that day, with plenty of eating and drinking and coming and going. But toward five o'clock the place grew quiet again. The visitors had gone home, and Gwen Madoc was upstairs. The old man was sleeping in his chair opposite the settle, and Miss Peggy was sitting on the window-seat watching him, her hands in her lap, her thoughts far away. Maybe she was trying to be really glad that the home, about which the cows lowed and the gulls screamed in the afternoon stillness and made it seem home each minute, was hers still; that she was not quite alone, nor friendless, nor poor. Maybe she was striving not to think of the thing which had been taken from her and could not be given back. Whatever her thoughts, she was aroused by some sound to find her eyes full of hot tears, through which she could dimly see that the old man was awake and looking at her with a strange expression, which disappeared as she became aware of it.
"He began to speak. 'Providence has been very good to us, Peggy,' he said, with grim meaning. 'It is well for you, my girl, that our eyes are open to see our kind friends as they are. There is one besides those who were here this morning that will wish he had not been so hasty.'