A moment before the veins of his forehead had been swollen, his face dark with the rush of blood. His anger died down, at sight of the packet, with strange abruptness. He regained his self-control, and a moment saw him pale and calm, all show of resentment confined to a wicked gleam in his eye. "A will!" he repeated, with a certain kind of dignity, though the hand he stretched out to take the envelope shook. "Indeed! Then it is my place to examine it. I am the heir-at-law, and I am within my rights, sir."
I feared that he was going to put the parcel into his pocket and dismiss me, and I was considering what course I should take in that event, when instead he carried the envelope to the table by the window, and tore off the cover without ceremony. "It is not in your handwriting?" were his first words, and he looked at me with a distrust that was almost superstitious. No doubt my sudden entrance, my ominous talk, and my discovery seemed to him to savor of the devil.
"No," I replied, unmoved. "I told your lordship that I had written a will at the late Lord Wetherby's dictation. I did not say--for how could I know?--that it was this one."
"Ah!" He hastily smoothed the sheets, and ran his eyes over their contents. When he reached the last page there was a dark scowl on his face, and he stood a while staring at the signatures; not now reading, I think, but collecting his thoughts. "You know the provisions of this?" he presently burst forth with violence, dashing the back of his hand against the paper. "I say, sir, you know the provisions of this?"
"I do not, my lord," I answered. Nor did I.
"The unjust provisions of this will!" he repeated, passing over my negative as if it had not been uttered. "Fifty thousand pounds to a woman who had not a penny when she married his son! Ay, and the interest on another hundred thousand for her life! Why, it is a prodigious income, an abnormal income, for a woman! And out of whose pocket is it to come? Out of mine, every stiver of it! It is monstrous! I say it is! How am I to keep up the title on the income left to me, I should like to know?"
I marveled. I remembered how rich he was. I could not refrain from suggesting that he had still remaining all the real property. "And," I added, "I understood, my lord, that the testator's personalty was sworn under four hundred thousand pounds."
"You talk nonsense!" he snarled. "Look at the legacies! Five thousand here, and a thousand there, and hundreds like berries on a bush! It is a fortune, a decent fortune, clean frittered away! A barren title is all that will be left to me!"
What was he going to do? His face was gloomy, his hands were twitching. "Who are the witnesses, my lord?" I asked, in a low voice.
So low--for, under certain conditions, a tone conveys much, very much--that he shot a stealthy glance toward the door before he answered, "John Williams."