'Thank you,' said Philip, holding out his hand; but Mr. Edmonstone withheld it, trying his patience by an endless quantity of discursive half-sentences, apparently without connection with each other, about disappointment, and hopes, and being sorry, and prospects, and its 'being an unpleasant thing,' and 'best not raise his expectations:' during all which time Philip, expecting to hear of Laura, and his heart beating so fast as to renew the sensation of faintness, waited in vain, and strove to gather the meaning, and find out whether he was forgiven, almost doubting whether the confusion was in his own mind or in his uncle's words. However, at last the meaning bolted out in one comprehensive sentence, when Mr. Edmonstone thought he had sufficiently prepared him for his disappointment,--'Poor Amy is to be confined in the spring.'
There Mr. Edmonstone stopped short, very much afraid of the effect; but Philip raised himself, his face brightened, as if he was greatly relieved, and from his heart he exclaimed, 'Thank Heaven!'
'That's right! that is very well said!' answered Mr. Edmonstone, very much pleased. 'It would be a pity it should go out of the old line after all; and it's a very generous thing in you to say so.'
'Oh no!' said Philip, shrinking into himself at even such praise as this.
'Well, well,' said his uncle, 'you will see he has thought of you, be it how it may. There! I only hope it is right; though it does seem rather queer, appointing poor little Amy executor rather than me. If I had but been here in time! But 'twas Heaven's will; and so--It does not signify, after all, if it is not quite formal. We understand each other.'
The will was on a sheet of letter-paper, in Arnaud's stiff French handwriting; it was witnessed by the two Mr. Morrises, and signed on the 27th of September, in very frail and feeble characters. Amabel and Markham were the executors, and Amabel was to be sole guardian, in case of the birth of a child. If it was a son, £1O,OOO was left to Philip himself; if not, he was to have all the plate, furniture, &c., of Redclyffe, with the exception of whatever Lady Morville might choose for herself.
Philip scarcely regarded the legacy (though it smoothed away his chief difficulties) as more than another of those ill-requited benefits which were weighing him to the earth. He read on to a sentence which reproached him so acutely, that he would willingly have hidden from it, as he had done from Guy's countenance. It was the bequest of £5000 to Elizabeth Wellwood. Sebastian Dixon's debts were to be paid off; £1000 was left to Marianne Dixon, and the rest of the personal property was to be Amabel's.