That evening came a note from Lady Tatham: 

“MY DEAR LYDIA: 

“We expect you to-morrow at 11:30.  Mr. Faversham has asked that we—­and you—­Cyril Boden, Doctor Undershaw, old Dixon, and Felicia (her poor mother is very ill, and we hear news to-day of the sudden death of the old grandfather)—­should meet him at that hour in Harry’s library.  And afterward, you will stay to lunch?  My dear, you have in this house two warm friends who love you and long to see you.  Each hour that passes grows more thrilling than the last....

“I have been spending some time with old Mrs. Brand—­and I told her I knew you would go to her to-morrow.  They have given her her dead son—­and she sits with his feet against her breast.  She loved him best of all.  One thinks of Rizpah gathering the bones.”

* * * * *

Next morning Tatham was in his library before eleven, making a pretence of attending to some County Council business, but in truth restless with expectation, and thinking of nothing but the events immediately ahead.

What was going to happen?

Faversham no doubt was going to propose some division of the Melrose inheritance with Felicia, and some adequate provision for the mother.  Only a few weeks before this date Tatham had been in a mood to loathe the notion that Felicia should owe a fortune, small or great, to the charity of a greedy intruder.  To-day he awaited Faversham’s visit as a friend, prepared to welcome his proposals in the spirit of a friend, to put, that is, the best and not the worst interpretation upon them.  After all, the fortune was legally his; and if Melrose had died intestate, Felicia and her mother would only have shared with some remote heirs with far less claim than Faversham.

He owed this change of temper—­he knew—­simply to the story which Undershaw had brought him of the last scene between Faversham and Melrose.  That final though tardy revolt had fired the young man’s feelings and drowned his wraths.  In his secret mind, he left Brand’s shot uncondemned; and the knowledge that before that final coup was given, the man whom Melrose had alternately bribed and bullied had at last found strength to turn upon him in defiance, flinging his money in his face, had given infinite satisfaction to Harry’s own hatred of a tyrant.  Faversham, even more than Brand, had avenged them all.  The generous, pugnacious youth was ready to take Faversham to his heart.

And yet, not without uneasiness, some dread of reaction in himself, if—­by chance—­they were all mistaken in their man!  Neither Boden, nor Undershaw, nor he had any definite idea of the conclusions to which Faversham had come.  He had not had a word to say to them on that head; although, during these ghastly weeks, when they had acted as buffers between him and an enraged populace, relations of intimacy had clearly grown up between him and Boden, and both Undershaw and Tatham had been increasingly conscious of liking, even respect, for a much-abused man.