“I pledge myself they require nothing unworthy of the cloth,” said sir Wilton.
“The cloth be hanged!” said Wingfold. “Do they require anything unworthy of a man—or if you think the word means more—of a gentleman?”
“They do not,” answered the baronet.
“Then you must write another paper, stating that you have asked me to undertake this, but that you have given me no hint of the contents of the accompanying document. This second you must enclose with the first, sealing the envelope with your own seal.”
Sir Wilton at once consented, and there and then did as Wingfold desired.
“I've check-mated my lady at last!” he chuckled, as he drove home. “She would have me the villain to disinherit my firstborn for her miserable brood! She shall find my other will, and think she's safe! Then the thunderbolt—and Dick master! My lady's dower won't be much for Percy the cad and Arthur the proper, not to mention Dorothy the cow, and Vixen the rat!”
He always spoke as if lady Ann's children were none of his. Her ladyship had taught him to do so, for she always said, “My children!”
That night he slept with an easier mind. He had put the deed off and off, regarding it as his abdication; but now it was done he felt more comfortable.
Wingfold suspected in the paper some provision for Richard, but could imagine no reason for letting it lie unopened until a year should have passed from the baronet's death. Troubling himself nothing, however, about what was not his business, he put the paper carefully aside—but where he must see it now and then, lest it should pass from his mind, and with sir Wilton's permission, told his wife what he had undertaken concerning it, that she might carry it out if he were prevented from doing so.
Time went on. Communication grew yet less between Mr. Wylder and his family. He had returned to certain old habits, and was spending money pretty fast in London. Failing to make himself a god in the house, he forsook it, and was rapidly losing this world's chance of appreciating a woman whose faults were to his as new wine to dirty water.