“Lest you should be tempted to take it?”
“No; lest I should annoy you by the use I made of it!”
“Tut, tut! I don't care what you do with it! You can't annoy me!”
He wrote a second cheque, blotted it, then finished the other, and held out both to Richard.
“I can't give you so much as the other poor beggars; you haven't the same claim upon me!” he said.
Richard took the cheques, looked at them, put the larger in his pocket, walked to the fire, and placed the other in the hottest cavern of it.
“By Jove!” cried the baronet, and again stared at him: he had seen his mother do precisely the same thing—with the same action, to the very turn of her hand, and with the same choice of the central gulf of fire!
Richard turned to sir Wilton, and would have thanked him again on behalf of Alice and Arthur, but something got up in his throat, and, with a grateful look and a bend of the head, he made for the door speechless.
“I say, I say, my lad!” cried sir Wilton, and Richard stopped.
“There's something in this,” the baronet went on, “more than I understand! I would give a big cheque to know what is in your mind! What does it all mean?”