“Fight it, certainly,” he said. “As soon as I have taken you home, I am to meet old Pownceby, and lay the whole case before the best man we can get. Thank Heaven, I am not without means to fight it out. Poor Uncle Giles! It is hard to call him up to a reckoning before all the world; but he could not have meant it; he could never have meant it.”
“I have his little tip for Osy,” said Margaret, with tears in her eyes.
“His little tip! when he ought to have provided for the boy!”
“Poor Uncle Giles! He was never very strong: and I believe she was very kind to him, and he was fond of her.”
“Do you want me to accept this absurd will, this loss to the race, because she was kind to him (granting that)--and an old man, in his dotage, was fond of a scheming woman?”
“Don’t call names,” said Margaret. “He was not in his dotage. We saw him----”
“Ah--called on purpose, that we might help to establish the fact,” said Colonel Piercey, fiercely. “What do you call it but dotage--that tip over which you are inclined to weep; and the reason alleged for it, that you had been the first to tell him something? Yes, I know what that means. Pownceby told me. That’s--how long since? But he believed it, just the same as ever, in the same kind of distant hope. What is that but dotage, Meg?”
“And must it all, everything--the mere foolish hope I expressed to please him, and anything she may have said--must it all be dragged before the public, and poor Uncle Giles’ foolish hopes?”
“Would you like me to throw it all over, and leave that woman to enjoy her ill-gotten gains? Do you say I am to do that, Meg?”
“I--say? Oh, no. What right have I? No, Cousin Gerald, I do not think you should give up your claim. I think”--she paused a moment, and her face lighted up, the words seemed to drop from her lips. Other thoughts flashed up in her eyes--an expectation, the light of happiness and peace. The carriage had turned a corner, and Chillfold, with her cottage in it, and her boy, brought the relief and ease of home to Margaret’s face. Her companion watched her eagerly. He saw the change that came over her. His thoughts followed hers with a quick revulsion of sympathy. He laid his hand upon hers.
“Meg,” he said, “do you know there has never been anybody in the world whose face has lighted up like that for me?”