“None. He merely said that if you declined to abandon all thought of her you should not have a penny.”
“And he has kept his word,” observed George, gloomily.
“Unfortunately it appears so.”
“He was unjust—cruelly unjust!” George protested. “I strove hard at the Bar, and had already obtained a few briefs when he recalled me here to be his companion. He would not allow me to follow my profession, yet he has now cast me adrift without resources.”
“You certainly have my entire sympathy,” the old lawyer declared, kindly. “But don’t take the matter too much to heart. The woman may be already married. In this case you will receive fifty thousand.”
George’s face relaxed into a faint smile.
“I have no desire to hear of or see the woman at all,” he answered. “Act as you think fit, but remember that I shall never offer her marriage—never.”
“She may be a pretty girl,” suggested the elder man.
“And she may be some blear-eyed old hag,” snapped the dead man’s son. “It is evident from the wording of the clause that my father has heard nothing of either mother or daughter for some years.”
“That’s all the more in your favour; because if she is thirty or so, the chances are that she is married. At all costs we must discover her.”