Page:What will he do with it.djvu/488

478 breathe out a blessing or to give up the ghost, as the worst brute of a father-in-law could possibly be. Nor were Darrell's words more comforting than his aspect.

"Sir, I have consented to see you, partly that you mayle arn from my own lips once for all that I admit no man's right to enter my family without my consent, and that consent you will never receive, and partly that, thus knowing each other by sight, each may know the man it becomes him most to avoid. The lady who is now your wife is entitled by my marriage-settlement to the reversion of a small fortune at my death; nothing more from me is she likely to inherit. As I have no desire that she to whom I once gave the name of daughter should be dependent wholly on yourself for bread, my solicitor will inform you on what conditions I am willing, during my life, to pay the interest of the sum which will pass to your wife at my death. Sir, I return to your hands the letters that lady has addressed to me, and which, it is easy to perceive, were written at your dictation. No letter from her will I answer. Across my threshold her foot will never pass. Thus, Sir, concludes all possible intercourse between you and myself; what rests is between you and that gentleman."

Darrell had opened a side-door in speaking the last words—pointed toward the respectable form of Mr. Gotobed standing tall beside his tall desk—and, before Jasper could put in a word, the father-in-law was gone.

With becoming brevity Mr. Gotobed made Jasper fully aware that not only all Mr. Darrell's funded or personal property was entirely at his own disposal—that not only the large landed estates he had purchased (and which Jasper had vaguely deemed inherited and in strict entail) were in the same condition—condition enviable to the proprietor, odious to the bridegroom of the proprietor's sole daughter; but that even the fee-simple of the poor Fawley Manor-House and lands were vested in Darrell, encumbered only by the portion of £10,000 which the late Mrs. Darrell had brought to her husband, and which was settled, at the death of herself and Darrell, on the children of the marriage.

In the absence of marriage-settlements between Jasper and Matilda, that sum at Darrell's death was liable to be claimed by Jasper, in right of his wife, so as to leave no certainty that provision would remain for the support of his wife and family; and the contingent reversion might, in the mean time, be so dealt with as to bring eventual poverty on them all.

"Sir," said the lawyer, "I will be frank with you. It is my wish, acting for Mr. Darrell, so to settle this sum of £10,000