Master Skyffington desired her to look over the papers,
ere she signed the formal receipt for them, but she
waved them gently aside:
“Quite unnecessary, kind master,” she
said decisively, “since I receive them at your
hands.”
She bent over the document which the lawyer now placed
before her, and took the pen from him.
“Where shall I sign?” she asked.
Sir Marmaduke and Editha de Chavasse watched her keenly,
as with a bold stroke of the pen she wrote her name
across the receipt.
“Now the papers, please, master,” said
Lady Sue peremptorily.
But the prudent lawyer had still a word of protest
to enter here.
“My dear young lady,” he said tentatively,
awed in spite of himself by the self-possessed behavior
of a maid whom up to now he had regarded as a mere
child, “let me, as a man of vast experience in
such matters, repeat to you the well-meant advice
which Sir Marmaduke ...”
But she checked him decisively, though kindly.
“You said, Master Skyffington, did you not,”
she said, “that after to-day no one had the
slightest control over my actions or over my fortune?”
“That is so, certainly,” he rejoined,
“but ...”
“Well, then, kind master, I pray you,”
she said authoritatively, “to hand me over all
those securities, grants and moneys, for which I have
just signed a receipt.”
There was naught to do for a punctilious lawyer, as
was Master Skyffington, but to obey forthwith.
This he did, without another word, collecting the
various bundles of paper and placing them one by one
in the brown leather wallet which he had brought for
the purpose. Sue watched him quietly, and when
the last of the important documents had been deposited
in the wallet, she held out her hand for it.
With a grave bow, and an unconsciously pompous gesture,
Master Skyffington, attorney-at-law, handed over that
wallet which now contained a fortune to Lady Susannah
Aldmarshe.
She took it, and graciously bowed her head to him
in acknowledgment. Then, after a slight, distinctly
haughty nod to Sir Marmaduke and to Editha, she turned
and walked silently out of the room.
HUSBAND AND WIFE
Mistress Martha Lambert was a dignified old woman,
on whose wrinkled face stern virtues, sedulously practiced,
had left their lasting imprint. Among these virtues
which she had thus somewhat ruthlessly exercised throughout
her long life, cleanliness and orderliness stood out
pre-eminently. They undoubtedly had brought some
of the deepest furrows round her eyes and mouth, as
indeed they had done round those of Adam Lambert,
who having lived with her all his life, had had to
suffer from her passion of scrubbing and tidying more
than anyone else.
But her cottage was resplendent: her chief virtues
being apparent in every nook and corner of the orderly
little rooms which formed her home and that of the
two lads whom a dying friend had entrusted to her care.
