T. W. Speight

“ Sir Gilbert, for his part, was well satisfied that his cousin should make the Chase her home for as long as it might suit her convenience to do so. That he would feel her departure as a loss whenever it should take place, he began to realise more clearly the longer she stayed. She was capital company; never otherwise than lively and in good spirits, not a bit in awe of him, and imbued with a sufficiency of the combative element to make her always ready to administer that pinch of contradiction which men like the Baronet need to put them on their mettle. ”

“ Miss Matilda took up the letter again and read aloud to the end. Tamsin had transferred the breakfast things to her tray, and had deposited the latter on the sideboard; she now proceeded to draw the cloth off the table and to slowly fold it. Not a word escaped her.
“I am afraid, sister, that we can but bow to the inevitable,” said Miss Matilda with a sigh as she folded the letter. “It seems to me that we have no right, even if we had the will, to withhold our approval of the step she has chosen to take.”
“My own view exactly,” replied Miss Jane with a sorrowful shake of the head. ”

“ Miss Jane, who was the more romantic of the two and still retained a vivid recollection of several of the heroines of the Rosa Matilda school of fiction on which her fancy had been nourished when a young woman scarcely out of her teens, would have held it to be no more than appropriate if, at the close of her interview with Miss Blair, Ethel had rushed into the sitting-room, her hair unbound and disordered and a frenzied glare in her eyes, and after a few incoherent exclamations, had either swooned right away, or gone off into violent hysterics. ”

“ Sir Gilbert had furnished him with no information as to how and where the young man had been brought up, and, in lack of some such data, he felt as if he were floundering in the dark. Lewis Clare spoke English with the ease and fluency of one to the manner born, even to the point, judging from certain of his remarks, of being an adept in slang. That he was not a gentleman in himself was certain, and it was equally certain that he lacked the indefinable cachet of one who has been in the habit of mixing in good society. ”

“ Then to Ethel, with a sudden softening of the voice, she said: “Child, child, cannot you understand that, despite all you have learnt to-day, nothing is to be changed—that you are still to be our niece, and we are still to be your aunts, and that everything is to go on precisely as before? Vale View will continue to be your home, as it has been for as long as you can remember, and you must never again hint at such a thing as going out into the world to earn your living, unless you wish your aunts to believe that you have ceased to care for them.” ”

“ Behind his back Giovanna and Luigi exchanged glances of perplexity and dismay. Drawing himself up with a sort of half-shake, as if trying to free himself from some harassing thought, and with a sigh meant for himself alone, Sir Gilbert again faced round.
“Pardon my remissness,” he said with a little gesture of annoyance, on perceiving that both his visitors were still standing, “but it is not every day that one is presented with a grandson. Pray be seated,” he added, and not till they had complied did he find a chair for himself. ”

“ At this juncture Luigi stepped out through the long window, and crossing to his grandfather, said: “Have you any objection, sir, to Miss Thursby playing the piano? If it will annoy you in the slightest degree, of course——”
“Not at all—not at all,” broke in Sir Gilbert a little brusquely. “Let her play by all means. Why should it annoy me, eh?”
“Not a bit like poor Alec—not one little bit,” remarked Lady Pell as if to herself; but, for a man of his years, Sir Gilbert’s hearing was extraordinarily keen, and her words reached him. ”

“ I thought as much,” remarked her uncle drily.
“And now that you have found out all this about Sir Gilbert Clare, in what way does it, or can it, affect me?” queried Vanna presently.
The Captain regarded her with a pitying smile, as he might a child who had asked him some utterly preposterous question.
“Cannot you see that the fact of your father-in-law being a rich and childless man may be made—I say made—to affect your fortunes very materially—very materially indeed? That is,” he added a moment after, “if you only know how to put the knowledge thus acquired to a practical use.” ”

“ But whatever she felt all she said to the Captain was: “I have to thank you for this, Uncle Verinder. If you had let me go to Sir Gilbert, as I wished to do, and tell him the truth—that my child died in infancy—he would not have repulsed me. No, he would have acknowledged me and have made much of me, and at his death I should not have been forgotten. But I listened to you and have lost everything. Oh! I think we are all very rightly punished.” ”

“ By the time the turret clock struck ten, Everard would be strolling back through the park in the direction of his rooms, with no company save a cigar and his own thoughts. At such seasons, with the fresh night air blowing about him, with the stars raining down sweet influences upon him, and with the huge ghost-like trees to sentinel him on his way, whither ought a young man’s thoughts to wing their flight save to the one fair being, fairer to him than all the world beside, who holds captive his heart, a willing prisoner! ”

“ In his study alone, busy among his coins and curios, sat Sir Gilbert Clare of Withington Chase, Hertfordshire, and Chase Ridings, Yorkshire, a handsome, well-preserved man, in years somewhere between fifty and sixty. He had a tall, thin, upright figure, strongly marked features of an aquiline type, a snow-white moustache, and an expression at once proud and imperious.
It would, indeed, have been difficult to find a prouder man than Sir Gilbert. ”

“ ETHEL AND TAMSIN
When Ethel had read Matthew Thursby’s letter to the last word she quietly refolded the paper and laid it on the table. The sisters were watching her every movement intently. She wished they would speak—that they would say something—anything. But it seemed as if they were waiting for her to break the silence. Her eyes turned from one to the other. In their faces she read nothing save love and compassion. ”

“ Yes, a lonely, childless old man is Sir Gilbert, but still carrying himself bravely before the world, as if in defiance of all the blows a cruel fate has aimed at him, and still retaining a large measure of his old irritability of temper and imperiousness of manner. Would it be too much to wonder whether his heart is ever touched with compunction, or regret, when his eyes chance to rest on a certain tablet above the family pew—that pew now empty of all but himself—which professes to record the death of his firstborn? ”

“ Then said Sir Gilbert aside to her ladyship: “Of course you have heard that only quite recently was I made aware of the existence of my grandson.”
“It would have been impossible for me not to have heard of it. It is the talk of the county—in everybody’s mouth.”
“And more than one pretty version of the affair has got into circulation, I do not doubt. Some people have more imagination than they are aware of. Give them but the merest thread of fact, and they will weave out of it a tissue of romance which does credit to their inventive powers, if to nothing else.” ”

“ For the first and all-important question which he asked himself was, as to the steps Sir Gilbert Clare might decide upon taking now that the nefarious plot of which he had been made the victim was laid bare from beginning to end. Would he, while the first flame of his resentment still burned fiercely, cause a warrant to be issued for the arrest of one Augustus Verinder? It was a possibility which might well cause even a man who prided himself on his nerve to shake in his shoes, and if the Captain did not exactly do that, he was certainly rendered excessively uncomfortable thereby. ”

“ Bitter, very bitter was her disappointment when, after their arrival in America, her husband took up his abode in a third-rate town in one of the Eastern States, where he conceived that there was an opening for the profitable investment of a portion of his capital. At that time his dream was to make a fortune, whereas he had only succeeded in losing his money, and in helping to build up the fortunes of others. All Giovanna’s foolish dreams had vanished like a wreath of mist at sunrise, and intensely did she resent the fact. ”

“ A consciousness had begun to dawn on her that within her heart, dormant as yet, or only just beginning timidly to unfold, lay the potentialities of a love very different from that which her ignorance had been beguiled into accepting as the “perfect flower of life.” Already for her the morn of a new and more beautiful love was beginning to break, before the sweetness and light of which all that was left in her memory of the deposed image of Launce Keymer would fade and crumble into nothingness. ”

“ She was a firm believer in first impressions, and for some of her callers she had conceived an immediate dislike which caused her silently to determine to see as little of them as possible in time to come. That, of course, is not the code of English society, which teaches us to smile our sweetest on those whom we dislike the most. But Giovanna had always been in the habit of giving way to her impulses, and she still had much to learn.
Sir Gilbert had felt from the first that it would not do for his daughter-in-law to live entirely alone. ”

“ The park was well timbered, and contained a number of grand old trees said to have been planted before the present mansion was in existence. In front of the house, but intersected by the drive, was a spacious expanse of closely-shaven lawn, to the right of which was a small but choicely kept flower-garden, while on its left was a shrubbery of tall clipped hedges and thick clumps of evergreens, among the sheltered paths of which Sir Gilbert found it pleasant to take his constitutional when the weather was too cold and raw to allow of his walking elsewhere in the open air. ”

“ Ethel shook her head. “Obedience sometimes degenerates into weakness, and wrongs done either to oneself or others are none the less wrongs even if dignified with the name of duty. But I will say no more now, Everard. I see that it would be useless to argue with you. And I must hurry back, for I have long outstayed my time. When we next meet it will be my turn to triumph.” Her eyes laughed up at her lover as he stooped and pressed his lips to hers. ”

“ Let us assume for the moment that you agree with me what a very desirable thing it would be to provide Sir Gilbert with an heir, even though it would, of necessity, have to be a fictitious one. Being, then, so far in accord, naturally the first question would be, ‘But where are we to find the heir in question—or rather, someone by whom he could be personated?’ To which I should reply that I am prepared at any moment to lay my finger on the one person out of all the hundreds and thousands of people in this big city best suited to our purpose. ”

“ You are the widow of the heir of Withington Chase, the daughter-in-law of a wealthy baronet of ancient family. As such, your proper position is there—there, as one of the glittering throng passing and repassing before our eyes. You ought to be riding in your own brougham or barouche, with your own coachman and footman. You ought to be wearing the family diamonds—who has so much right to them as you?—and where is there another woman who would show them off to better advantage? ”

“ Then, drawing forth his lantern, he pushed the slide halfway back and shot a gleam of light around. All the familiar features of the room were there just as he had seen them last.
Thus far everything had gone so well with him and so exactly as his uncle had predicted it would, that he began to gather courage, and even caught himself smiling at his own exaggerated fears. Well, it was his first attempt in that particular line of business, so that every excuse ought to be made for him, and in all sincerity he hoped it would be his last. ”

“ For all Sir Gilbert looks as strong as some gnarled old monarch of the woods, who can say whether he’s sound at the core? Looks are deceptive things, and at his age he might go off at a day’s notice—nay, without any notice at all. It was nothing less than a stroke of genius to represent Vanna’s father as belonging to the old Italian nobility. It touched him in a weak spot. Vanna must on no account forget that she is no longer an innkeeper’s daughter, but a person of much greater consequence. ”

“ It may be that Lady Pell’s liking for the Chase was due in part, if not wholly, to her recollection of a certain happy season she had spent there when in her teens. It had been the scene of the first and, possibly, the only romance her life had known—a poor little futile romance, as events had proved—but perhaps none the less cherished on that account; and it was still the home of the man who had been the ideal of her girlish dreams. ”

“ Keymer’s face as he read the concluding lines of Ethel’s epistle. He had always regarded himself as a man of honour and of the strictest integrity in his dealings with others, as one careful never to overpass that thin line which in but too many instances is all that divides trade morality from that other commodity, often hardly to be distinguished from it, of which the law takes cognisance; but there was that in some of Miss Thursby’s phrases which stung him to the quick, not merely on Launce’s account, but on his own. ”

“ Everard’s love for Ethel, which her refusal of him had compelled him to crush down with all the force of his will, but which nothing had availed to kill, under the daily sunshine of her presence sprang up into fresh and vigorous life. To all outward seeming, as he flattered himself, his treatment of her in no wise differed from that which he would have accorded to any other young woman with whom circumstances might have brought him into daily contact; but on that point, as we have seen, he was mistaken, Lady Pell having penetrated his secret almost from the first. ”

“ Behind that Dutch-clock-like mask of a face was a complex-working brain which delighted in secrets and mysteries, and occasionally went so far as to imagine them where none existed. Although his employer had never told him so—for that was one of the few matters which the lawyer kept to himself—Mr. Winch had not the least doubt in his mind that the John Alexander to whom the letter of which he was the bearer was addressed and the heir of Withington Chase, who had set out on his travels upwards of four years ago and had never returned, were one and the same person. ”

“ Not till Everard was within a few yards of her did Ethel emerge from the umbrage of the trees and go slowly to meet him. He gave a great start the moment his eyes fell on her, and all his face lighted suddenly up as she had foretold it would. Three or four quick strides brought him to her side, and the same instant she was enfolded in his arms and strained close to his heart. Gently disengaging herself she said—
“Is this the way to treat an unprotected female? You ought really to try to get the better of your primitive instincts. Marriage by capture went out centuries ago. ”

“ In the course of the day she took an opportunity of informing Sir Gilbert of the engagement of Ethel Thursby and Everard Lisle. That the news afforded him genuine pleasure could not be doubted. “So I shall not lose my little girl after all!” he said. “That is indeed something worth hearing. She has become very dear to me, Louisa; I may tell you so now; and I should have felt the loss of her more, perhaps, than the occasion would have seemed to warrant, for she has contrived to steal her way into my affections in a quite unaccountable fashion. My old age is the sweeter for her presence. ”

“ But it was too late to go back even had she been willing to do so—which was doubtful: for it is no uncommon experience for a person to recognise to the full the blackness of any wrong-doing in which he or she may be engaged, and yet not to falter, or swerve for a moment from the line of action they have laid down for themselves.
“And this, madam, is the grandson whom you have brought from the kingdom of Nowhere to make me a present of,” continued Sir Gilbert as he faced Luigi.
“This, sir, is your grandson, Lewis Clare,” replied Giovanna in quiet measured tones. ”

“ It was too early for breakfast, so they left the house and went for a stroll in the grounds.
“I wish, Lewis, my boy,” remarked the Captain cheerfully, “you would try not to look quite so glum and down in the mouth. If you had a murder on your mind you could hardly look more wretched than you do. Do, for goodness sake, assume a cheerfulness; even if you can’t feel it—though what cause you have for being anything else than cheerful, I cannot for the life of me imagine.”
“Oh, I’m not like you; I haven’t nerves of cast iron; I wish I had,” retorted Luigi. “Be cheerful, indeed! ”