"The unjust provisions of this will," he repeated, passing over my negative as if it had not been uttered. "Fifty thousand pounds to a woman who had not a penny when she married his son! Aye, and the interest on another hundred thousand for her life! Why, it is a prodigious income, an abnormal income--for a woman! And out of whose pocket is it to come? Out of mine, every stiver of it! It is monstrous! I say it is! How am I to keep up the title on the income left to me, I should like to know?" I marvelled. I remembered how rich he was. I could not refrain from suggesting that he had still remaining all the real property. "And," I added, "I understood, my lord, that the testator's personalty was sworn under four hundred thousand pounds." "You talk nonsense!" he snarled. "Look at the legacies! Five thousand here, and a thousand there, and hundreds like berries on a bush! It is a fortune, a decent fortune, clean frittered away! A barren title is all that will be left to me!" What was he going to do? His face was gloomy, his hands were twitching. "Who are the witnesses, my lord?" I asked in a low voice. So low--for under certain conditions a tone conveys much, very much--that he shot a stealthy glance towards the door before he answered, "John Williams." "Blind," I replied in the same low tone. "William Williams." "He is dead. He was Mr. Alfred's valet. I remember reading in the newspaper that he was with his master, and was killed by the Indians at the same time." "True. I remember that that was the case," he answered huskily. "And the handwriting is Lord Wetherby's." I assented. Then for fully a minute we were silent, while he bent over the will, and I stood behind him looking down at him with thoughts in my mind which he could as little fathom as could the senseless wood upon which I leaned. Yet I too mistook him. I thought him, to be plain, a scoundrel; and--well, so he was--but a mean one. "What is to be done?" he muttered at length, speaking rather to himself than to me. I answered softly, "I am a poor man, my lord," while inwardly I was quoting "_quem Deus vult perdere_." My words startled him. He answered hurriedly, "Just so! just so! So shall I be when this cursed paper takes effect. A very poor man! A hundred and fifty thousand gone at a blow! But there, she shall have it! She shall have every penny of it; only," he concluded slowly, "I do not see what difference one more day will make."