Chapter XXI. Colonel Kelmscott's Punishment

While Montague Nevitt was thus congenially engaged in pulling off his treble coup of settling his own share in the Rio Negro deficit, pocketing three thousand pounds, pro tem, for incidental expenses, and getting Guy Waring thoroughly into his power by his knowledge of a forgery, two other events were taking place elsewhere, which were destined to prove of no small importance to the future of the twins and their immediate surroundings. Things generally were converging towards a crisis in their affairs. Colonel Kelmscott's wrong-doing was bearing first-fruit abundantly.

For as soon as Granville Kelmscott received that strangely-worded note from Gwendoline Gildersleeve, he proceeded, as was natural, straight down, in his doubt, to his father's library. There, bursting into the room, with Gwendoline's letter still crushed in his hand in the side pocket of his coat, and a face like thunder, he stood in the attitude of avenging fate before his father's chair, and gazed down upon him angrily.

"What does this mean?" he asked, in a low but fuming voice, brandishing the note before his eyes as he spoke. "Is every one in the county to be told it but I? Is everybody else to hear my business before you tell me a word of it? A letter comes to me this morning--no matter from whom--and here's what it says: 'I know you're not the eldest son, and that somebody else is the heir of Tilgate.' Surely, if anybody was to know, I should have known it first. Surely, if I'm to be turned adrift on the world, after being brought up to think myself a man of means so long, I should, at least, be turned adrift with my eyes open."

Colonel Kelmscott gazed at him open-mouthed with horror.

"Did Gwendoline Gildersleeve write that to you?" he cried, overpowered at once by remorse and awe. "Did Gwendoline Gildersleeve write that to you? Well, if Gwendoline Gildersleeve knows it, it's all up with the scheme! That rascally lawyer, her father, has found out everything. These two young men must have put their case in the fellow's hands. He must be hunting up the facts. He must be preparing to contest it. My boy, my boy, we're ruined! we're ruined!"

"These two young men," Granville repeated, with a puzzled air of surprise. "What two young men? I don't know them. I never heard of them." Then suddenly one of those flashes of intuition burst in upon him that burst in upon us all at moments of critical importance to our lives. "Father, father," he cried, loaning forward in his anguish and clutching the oak chair, "you don't mean to tell me those fellows, the Warings, that we met at Chetwood Court, are your lawful sons--and that that was why you bought the landscape with the snake in it?"

Kelmscott, of Tilgate, bent his proud head down to the table unchecked. "My son, my son," he cried, in his despair, "you have said it yourself. Your