"Really, my dear, I can hardly say. Mr. Brock was the most intimate friend of your father and Dr. Carson. Failing the fulfilment of his primary wish, it is evident your father decided to pass on the money to his best friend. That is how the will stands, though, as I have said, it is not easy to approve of it in all respects."
"It is a hard and cruel will," said Olive, despondently. "I am sure I don't wish to rob Mr. Carson or any one else of the money, but, on the other hand, I have no wish to become the wife of a man who is a complete stranger to me. My affections are not a regiment of soldiers, to be ordered about in this way."
"Well," said Mr. Dimbal, fishing up a blue envelope with a red seal from the depths of his black bag--"well, Olive, here is your father's letter. It may perhaps explain his reason for making what, I allow, is a most extraordinary disposition of his personalty."
Olive took the letter in silence, and, rising from her chair, opened it at the window with her back to the lawyer. It contained a single sheet of paper, on which were written eight lines in her father's well-known hand. They were shaky and faint, as though they had been penned--as indeed they were--by a dying man.
"When you read these lines you will know that it is my last wish and command that you should marry Angus Carson, to whom you have been engaged since your birth. Marry him, I implore you--not so much for the money, as, because if you do not become his wife, evil, terrible evil, will come of your refusal. If you ever loved me, if my memory is dear to you, fulfil my dying wish, and marry Angus Carson within a month of your twenty-first birthday. If you refuse, God help you!
As white as ashes Olive let the paper flutter to the floor.
"What does it mean?" she murmured faintly. "My God, what can it mean?"
"What about to-day, Mallow?" asked Aldean, as with his friend and mentor he enjoyed a morning pipe, pacing the terrace of Kingsholme.
"The day is right enough," replied Laurence, morosely; and he looked with a jaundiced eye on the green country stretching beyond a fringe of trees towards the blue and distant hills.
"I don't think you are," retorted his lordship; "you have not spoken two words the whole of breakfast."