"What!--you think he still has them--in the upper regions?" Coryston flung an audacious hand toward the ceiling. Lady Coryston grew pale. Marcia looked fiercely at her brother, and, coming to her mother's side, she took her hand. "Your brothers and sister, Coryston, will not allow you, I think, to insult your father's memory!" The voice audibly shook. Coryston sprang up impetuously and came to stand over his mother, his hands on his sides. "Now look here, mother. Let's come to business. You've been plotting something more against me, and I want to know what it is. Have you been dishing me altogether?--cutting me finally out of the estates? Is that what you mean? Let's have it!" Lady Coryston's face stiffened anew into a gray obstinacy. "I prefer, Coryston, to tell my story in my own words and in my own way--" "Yes--but please _tell_ it!" said Coryston, sharply. "Is it fair to keep us on tenter-hooks? What is that paper, for instance? Extracts, I guess, from your will--which concern me--and the rest of them"--he waved his hand toward the other three. "For God's sake let's have them, and get done with it." "I will read them, if you will sit down, Coryston." With a whimsical shake of the head Coryston returned to his chair. Lady Coryston took up the folded paper. "Coryston guessed rightly. These are the passages from my will which concern the estates. I should like to have explained before reading them, in a way as considerate to my eldest son as possible" she looked steadily at Coryston--"the reasons which have led me to take this course. But--" "No, no! Business first and pleasure afterward!" interrupted the eldest son. "Disinherit me and then pitch into me. You get at me unfairly while I'm speculating as to what's coming." "I think," said Marcia, in a tone trembling with indignation, "that Coryston is behaving abominably." But her brothers did not respond, and Coryston looked at his sister with lifted brows. "Go it, Marcia!" he said, indulgently. Lady Coryston began to read. Before she had come to the end of her first paragraph Coryston was pacing the drawing-room, twisting his lips into all sorts of shapes, as was his custom when the brain was active. And with the beginning of the second, Arthur sprang to his feet. "I say, mother!" "Let me finish?" asked Lady Coryston with a hard patience. She read to the end of the paper. And with the last words Arthur broke out: "I won't have it, mother! It's not fair on Corry. It's beastly unfair!" Lady Coryston made no reply. She sat quietly staring into Arthur's face, her hands, on which the rings sparkled, lightly clasped over the paper which lay upon her knee. James's expression was one of distress. Marcia sat dumfoundered. James approached his mother. "I think, mother, you will hardly maintain these provisions." She turned toward him. "Yes, James, I shall maintain them." Meanwhile Arthur, deeply flushed, stood running his hand through his fair hair as though in bewilderment.