‘Then he will know how to take care of her,’ said Saymore, which made the room ring with laughter: for though the affairs of the drawing-room were interesting, there was naturally a still warmer attraction in the drama going on downstairs. Mr. Mountford was in his room alone. He had retired there after dinner, as was his custom. At dinner he had been very serious. He had not been able to get Mr. Loseby’s words out of his mind. Every word a nail in his coffin! What superstitious folly it was! No man ever died the sooner for attending to his affairs, for putting them in order, he said to himself. But this was not simply putting them in order. His mind was greatly disturbed. He had thought that, as soon as he had done it he would be relieved and at ease from the pressure of the irritation which had disturbed him so; but now that it was done he was more disturbed than ever. Perhaps for the first time he fully realised that, if anything should happen to himself, one of his children would be made to sustain the cruellest disappointment and wrong. ‘It will serve her right,’ he tried to say to himself, ‘for the way she has behaved to me;’ but when it became really apparent to him that this would be, not merely a tremendous rebuff and discomfiture for Anne, but a settled fate which she could not escape, a slight shiver ran through him. He had not seen this so plainly before. He had meant to punish her, cruelly, even bitterly, and with an ironical completeness. But then he had never meant to die. This made a greater difference than it was possible to say. He meant that she should know that her marriage was impossible; that he had the very poorest opinion of the man she had chosen; that he would not trust him, and was determined never to let him handle a penny of his (Mr. Mountford’s) money. In short, he said to himself, what he meant was to save Anne from this adventurer, who would no longer wish to marry her when he knew her to be penniless. He meant, he persuaded himself, that his will should have this effect in his lifetime; he meant it to be known, and set things right, not in the future, but at once. Now that all was done he saw the real meaning of the tremendous instrument he had made for the first time. To save Anne from an adventurer--not to die and leave her without provision, not really to give anything away from her, though she deserved it after the way in which she had defied him, had been his intention. Mr. Mountford thought this over painfully, not able to think of anything else. Last night even, no later, he had been thinking it over vindictively, pleased with the cleverness and completeness with which he had turned the tables upon his daughter. It had pleased him immoderately before it was done. But now that it was done, and old Loseby, like an old fool, had thrown in that bit of silly superstition about the nails in his coffin, it did not please him any longer. His face had grown an inch or two longer, nothing like a smile