"Put their d--d numbskulls under it, you mean. How can they move--how can they stir? I'd like to know how they can touch my title? I don't care a curse about them. What the plague's frightening you and Crowe _now_? I'm blest if I don't think you're growing old. Why can't you stick to your own view?--you say one thing one day and another the next. Egad, there's no knowing where to have you."
The Baronet was talking bitterly, scornfully, and with all proper contempt of his adversaries, but there's no denying he looked very pale.
"And there certainly is activity there; cases have been with counsel on behalf of Guy Deverell, the son and heir of the deceased," pursued Mr. Pelter, with his hands in his pockets, looking grimly up into the Baronet's face.
"Won't you sit down?--do sit down, Pelter; and you haven't had wine?" said Sir Jekyl.
"Well, you must have some claret. I'd like a glass myself."
He had rung the hell, and a servant appeared.
"I'm not blaming you, mind; but is it not odd we should have known nothing of this son, and this pretended marriage till now?"
"Odd!--oh dear, no!--you don't often know half so much of the case at the other side--nothing at all often till it's on the file."
"Precious satisfactory!" sneered Sir Jekyl.
"When we beat old Lord Levesham, in Blount and Levesham, they had not a notion, no more than the man in the moon, what we were going on, till we produced the release, and got a direction, egad." And the attorney laughed over that favourite recollection.
"Take a glass of claret. This is '34. Maybe you'd like some port better?"
"No, thanks, this will do very nicely," said the accommodating attorney. "Thirty-four? So it is, egad! and uncommon fine too."
"I hope you can give me a day or two--not business, of course--I mean by way of holiday," said Sir Jekyl. "A little country air will do you a world of good--set you up for the term."
Mr. Pelter smiled, and shook his head shrewdly.
"Quite out of the question, Sir Jekyl, I thank you all the same--business tumbling in too fast just now--I daren't stay away another day--no, no--ha, ha, ha! no rest for us, sir--no rest for the wicked. But this thing, you know, looks rather queerish, we thought--a little bit urgent: the other party has been so sly; and no want of money, sir--the sinews of war--lots of tin there."