A Gamble with Life Part 63

He was ushered by a maid-servant into a comfortably but modestly furnished room, where he flung himself into an easy chair and waited.

In a few seconds a light step sounded outside; the door was pushed quickly open, and Madeline Grover came smiling and radiant into the room. The old lawyer rose slowly, and his face relaxed.

"This is an unexpected pleasure," she said, brightly. "Have you been hearing again from Sir Charles?"

"Not a word. It's the other man we have to deal with now."

"What other man?"

"Why the man I sent the money to, of course."

"Well, what of him?"

"He's in New York, and has nearly worried the life out of me this morning!"

"In New York!" and the hot blood rushed suddenly to her neck and face.

"In New York! And if he don't clear out soon there'll be complications!"

"Why has he come?"

"To look after his property, of course. Are you surprised?"

"I am a little. It never occurred to me that he might come to America."

"Well, he has come, and the question is whether you are going to make--well, a clean breast of it, or allow him to ferret it out himself?"

"Oh! he must not know for the world!" she said, in a tone of alarm.

"He's bound to get to know sooner or later that somebody has made him a present of five thousand dollars----"

"No, it is only a loan," she interrupted, quickly.

Mr. Graythorne laughed. "A loan that was never to be paid, eh? A loan by an anonymous lender? Well, what's in a name? Call it a loan if the word pleases you better."

"But you know what I mean. Some day, of course,--years and years hence, when nothing matters"--and she blushed uncomfortably; "but just now nothing need be said or even hinted----"

"I understand," he said, with a twitching of the lips.

"You know very well that he has property out West somewhere, which he is bound to come into possession of soon, and it seemed a pity that he should starve and perhaps die while waiting for it."

"Well, yes; the motive does you credit."

"You ascertained beforehand, as you know, that he would have plenty to pay me back with later on, and, after all, the sum was only a small one."

"To you, perhaps."

"But to him it would mean everything, and I owe him more than gold can ever pay. As I told you before, he saved my life and nearly lost his own in doing it."

"Quite a pretty little romance, I own; worked up into a story it would read very well. But how about the present situation?"

"He must not know, of course."

"And you expect me, a lawyer, to equivocate--to say one thing and mean another--to talk, as it were, with my tongue in my cheek? Oh, Miss Grover, what would become of the profession--I mean morally--if all clients were like you?"

"It would be much nearer the kingdom," she said, with a laugh. "I don't ask you to tell lies; I only ask you to hold your tongue."

"But it is much easier said than done. You know this young man, and he ain't no fool either; and he has a pretty little way of asking point-blank questions. And if I ain't mistaken he can draw an inference as slick as most folks."

"But lawyers never reveal secrets," she said, smiling at him with her eyes.

"Nothing more quickly awakens suspicion than silence," he said. "And if he once gets on the trail----"

"He cannot possibly find me among eighty millions of people scattered over this continent."

"But suppose he were to drop on you by accident?" and the old lawyer pretended to be looking at a picture on the other side of the room.

She tried her best to keep back the tell-tale blush, but it would come.

"Oh, we should shake hands," she said, in a tone of indifference, "and pretend to be surprised, of course, and then we should talk about what had happened in St. Gaved since I left."

"He is a very handsome young man," the lawyer said absently.

"Yes, he is rather good-looking, isn't he?" and the colour grew deeper on her usually pale face.

"I think you told me once you admired his spirit?"

"I admire him very much."

"And if he calls to-morrow I must say no more than I have said to-day?"

"Say what you like so long as you keep my name out of it."

"And you don't want to see him? And you wouldn't for the world that he should know you are alive in New York City?"

"For the present at any rate."

"I think I understand," he said, gravely, but a smile twinkled in the corner of his eye.

Meanwhile Rufus was busy reading through once more the papers he had obtained from his grandfather. He folded them up at length and replaced them in his portmanteau.

"It's not a bit of use waiting here," he said to himself. "That old lawyer knows no more about it than I do. I'll go westward to-night."

The next morning found him in the busy town of Pittsburg, where he spent a couple of days making inquiries; then he pressed forward again until he reached Reboth, on the borders of Ohio.

Settling himself in the most comfortable hotel he could find he commenced his investigations. It was here his father had lived for several years. It was here he died. Reboth was only a village then. Its mineral wealth was unknown; its blast furnaces had not been lighted, its coal seams undiscovered. Joshua Sterne foresaw some of its possibilities, and invested all his savings, lived long enough to see the prospect of great wealth, and then almost suddenly pa.s.sed out of life.

After that followed years of litigation, Joshua Sterne had left no one who could fight his battles. The widow quickly yielded up the ghost, and the Rev. Reuben was too far away, too other-worldly, too lacking in business tact, and too suspicious of American lawyers and American ways to follow up any advantage that came to him.