‘But probably this is all over now,’ said Mr. Ponsonby,--‘or at least, we have every reason to believe so; and in the meantime they have had their struggles, and know what they are capable of. Let us hope, my dear madam, that everything will prove to have been for the best.’
‘I don’t doubt that everything is for the best,’ Mrs. Renton answered in plaintive tones. And then Mr. Ponsonby was left to his wine in the great old dining-room, which he had not been in since that dismal day when he read the will,--or rather the preface of the will,--to the startled family. It was a bright room enough in the morning when the sunshine came in, or on winter nights when the fire sparkled and glimmered in the wainscot; but it was very sombre in the dimness of a summer night, with one lamp on the table and the windows open, admitting the night with all its ghosts of sound and profound soft glooms. The family solicitor was not an imaginative man, and yet he could not help feeling that his old friend might come in any moment through the curtains, which hung half over the open window, and dictate to him some new condition in the will which had already wrought so much mischief. ‘Not a word more,’ Mr. Ponsonby caught himself saying; and then he roused up and went to Mary in the drawing-room, where she was seated alone in much the same magical half-darkness as that he had left.
‘I suppose it is the instinct of a Londoner,’ he said; ‘but I declare I don’t think this is safe. Sitting with windows open to the lawn, all alone at this hour! Suppose some one should walk in upon you before you had time to give an alarm?’
‘Who could walk in upon me?’ said Mary, laughing. ‘We are at Renton, you know, and not in Harley Street.’
‘Sure enough,’ said the townsman. ‘No, thanks; I prefer to face that window. Let me not be approached from behind; let me see what is coming, at least.’
‘How odd to think of such a thing!’ said Mary. ‘I sit here every evening after godmamma has gone to bed, and one cannot live unless all the windows are open. But oh, Mr. Ponsonby, do talk to me a little! Do you think,--do you really think,--that now, at last, things will be comfortable for the boys?’
‘Let us hope so,’ said the man of law, arranging himself comfortably in an easy-chair. ‘I suppose Mrs. Renton has gone to bed. Let us hope so, at least.’