Brand--and I told her I
knew you would go to her to-morrow. They have given her her dead son--and
she sits with his feet against her breast. She loved him best of all. One
thinks of Rizpah gathering the bones."
* * * * *
Next morning Tatham was in his library before eleven, making a pretence
of attending to some County Council business, but in truth restless with
expectation, and thinking of nothing but the events immediately ahead.
What was going to happen?
Faversham no doubt was going to propose some division of the Melrose
inheritance with Felicia, and some adequate provision for the mother.
Only a few weeks before this date Tatham had been in a mood to loathe the
notion that Felicia should owe a fortune, small or great, to the charity
of a greedy intruder. To-day he awaited Faversham's visit as a friend,
prepared to welcome his proposals in the spirit of a friend, to put, that
is, the best and not the worst interpretation upon them. After all, the
fortune was legally his; and if Melrose had died intestate, Felicia and
her mother would only have shared with some remote heirs with far less
claim than Faversham.
He owed this change of temper--he knew--simply to the story which
Undershaw had brought him of the last scene between Faversham and
Melrose. That final though tardy revolt had fired the young man's
feelings and drowned his wraths. In his secret mind, he left Brand's shot
uncondemned; and the knowledge that before that final _coup_ was given,
the man whom Melrose had alternately bribed and bullied had at last found
strength to turn upon him in defiance, flinging his money in his face,
had given infinite satisfaction to Harry's own hatred of a tyrant.
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