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It was afterward suspected that Pennroyal's intoxication had been assumed for the purpose of insulting the heir of Malmaison with the more impunity; and that the Major was present expressly to aid and abet him. What, then, was the object, and what the grounds, of the charge which Pennroyal made? With respect to the latter, nothing was known until later; but the immediate result was this.
Pennroyal consider that people might say that the death of his wife was no loss to him, but the contrary? because that fifty thousand pounds of hers, of which, during her lifetime, he could touch only the interest, became, at her decease, his absolute property, to do with as he liked. Under such circumstances, a gentleman careful of his reputation should have guarded her as the apple of his eye.
Now God have mercy!" Sir Archibald looked; and there, indeed, stood the tall figure of the Honorable Richard Pennroyal, without his hat, and with an expression on his face that was a living curse to behold. And yet that face smiled and bowed with a hideous politeness. "Good-evening, Sir Archibald. Will you permit me to inquire whether you are armed?"
"I am not here to tutor schoolboys in the comprehension of the English tongue." "I cannot allow you to evade my question," rejoined Sir Edward, with a gleam in his eye, though without an alteration in his voice. "You must explain what you have seen fit to insinuate before these gentlemen, one way or the other." Pennroyal laughed.
He loved a certain brindled cat that he had more than anything else: next to her, his little baby sister; and oddly enough, he conceived a sort of dog-like admiration for the Honorable Richard Pennroyal a compliment which that personage did nothing to deserve, and which he probably did not desire.
In the spring of the year 1824 about nine months after Sir Edward's death it was known in every mansion and public house for twenty miles round that a great lawsuit would by-and-by be commenced between Malmaison and Pennroyal, the question to be decided being nothing less than the ownership of the Malmaison estates, which Richard Pennroyal claimed, in the alleged failure of any legitimate heir of Sir John Malmaison, deceased the father of Sir Clarence but, as Pennroyal alleged, by a left-handed marriage.
But she held on her course; and he, smiling in a defiant way, shook his bridle, and in a few moments they were but half a dozen yards apart. There they paused, as it seemed, by mutual consent. How lovely she looked! Sir Archibald saw it, and ground his teeth with a kind of silent rage. She should have been his. "Good-day, Mrs. Richard Pennroyal!" "Good-day, Archibald!"
Pennroyal after a while came round to where he was sitting, and the two gentlemen presently fell into conversation. Sir Edward was constrained to ask him what he meant. Pennroyal thereupon began to utter disparaging reflections upon the late Sir Clarence, who, he intimated, was not legally entitled to his name.
The next moment the baronet's eyes rolled wildly, a gasping noise broke from him, and he fell forward with his head on the table. Mr. Pennroyal promptly arose and rang the bell. "Send for the doctor at once," he said to the servant who appeared. "Sir Clarence has overdrunk himself, or overeaten himself, I fancy. And help me to put him on the sofa and loosen his neckcloth. There very distressing.
Accordingly, when Pennroyal whether maliciously, or from honest good-will toward one who manifested an almost child-like attachment to himself chose Sir Edward's brother in his default, Sir Edward offered no open opposition. If he remonstrated privately with Archibald, his arguments were void of effect, and would have been, besides, counteracted by Lady Malmaison's influence.
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