Only One Love, or Who Was the Heir Part 53

"Was Lady Bell there?" he asked, quietly.

Jack leaped to his feet.

"Lady Bell! I see what you mean!" he groaned. "Len, you are in love yourself, and yet you ask me to sell myself----"

Leonard flushed.

"Jack, much as I care for you, I swear that I am thinking as much of her good and happiness as of your own. If you marry her--which, after all, you _cannot_--if you could you would make her life miserable; if you marry Lady Bell, you will at least make _her_--happy."

Jack paced up and down for a moment. Then he turned, white and haggard, and held out his hand:

"You are right. Would to Heaven you were not! I see it, I cannot help it. I will not make her life miserable. But--but--I must go and tell her. Heaven help us both!"

CHAPTER XXV.

Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise. Quite ignorant and unconscious of all that was going on in London, Stephen remained down at the Hurst.

What he had written to his mother was quite true; as a matter of fact Stephen was far too clever to write direct falsehoods--he was kept at Hurst Leigh very much against his will.

Squire Ralph had left him everything--money, house, lands, everything excepting the few legacies to servants, and Stephen had been hard at work, and was still hard at work ascertaining how much that everything was.

And, as day followed day, and disclosure succeeded disclosure, he became fascinated and possessed by the immense wealth which had fallen into his hands, or, say rather, which he had seized upon.

For many years the old squire had lived upon less than half his income; the remainder he had invested and speculated with, and as often happens to the miser, the luck of Midas had fallen upon him.

Everything he touched had turned to gold. The most unlikely speculations had proved successful; properties which he had bought for a mere song, and which had been regarded by the most wary as dangerous and profitless, had become profitable and valuable.

Some of these risky speculations he had, not unnaturally, kept concealed from the prudent Hudsley, who only now, by the discovery of scrip and bonds in out-of-the-way desks and bureaus, learned what kind of man his old friend had really been.

Not a day pa.s.sed but it brought to light some addition to the old man's gains, and served to swell the immense total.

Even the lands round Hurst had been manipulated by the old man, so that leases ran out almost at his death, and rents were raised.

One speculation will serve as an instance; he had purchased, some fifteen years before his death, the freehold of an estate bordering upon London; and in a locality which was then regarded as hopelessly unfas.h.i.+onable. A great capitalist had ruined himself by building large houses on the property, foreseeing that at some time or other the tide of the great city would reach this. .h.i.therto high and dry spot. But he had made a miscalculation, and he died before the tide which was to bring him wealth reached his property; old Ralph had then stepped in and bought it--houses, land, everything. In ten years' time the tide of fas.h.i.+on rolled that way, and now what had once been a neglected and forgotten quarter was the center of fas.h.i.+onable London.

It reads like a romance, but like many other romances, it was true.

Old Ralph himself had no idea of his own wealth, and that when he died he should leave behind him one of the most colossal fortunes in England.

Almost stunned by the immense total--so far as it had been arrived at--Stephen went about the place silent and overwhelmed.

But one thought was always ringing like a bell in his brain--"And I had nearly lost all this!"

Sometimes, in the quiet of the library, where he sat surrounded by books and papers, by accountants' statements and estimates, he would grow pale and tremble as he reflected by what a narrow chance he had secured this Midas-like wealth.

But had he secured it? and when the question presented itself, as it did a hundred, aye, a thousand times a day, he would turn ashy pale, and clutch the edge of the table to keep himself from reeling.

Where was that will--the real, true, valid will--which left everything away from him to Una?

Day by day, while going over the accounts, he found himself waiting, watching, expecting someone--whom he could not imagine--coming in and saying: "This is not yours; here is the will. I found it so and so, at such and such a time!" and he felt that if such a moment occurred it would kill him.

But as the days pa.s.sed and no one came to contest his claim to the property, he grew more confident and a.s.sured, and at last he nearly succeeded in convincing himself that he really had burned the will.

"After all," he mused, over and over again, "that is the only probable, the only possible explanation. Is it likely that if anyone had the accursed thing they would keep it hidden? No! If they were honest, they would have declared it at once; if dishonest, they would have brought it to me and traded upon it. Yes, I was half mad that night. I must have destroyed it at the moment Laura knocked at the window."

But all the same he determined to make his position secure. Immediately he had arranged matters at the Hurst he would go to London and marry Una.

"She is all safe and sound there," he mused, with a satisfied smile. "My mother leads the life of a hermit. The girl herself has no friends--not one single soul in London. I shall be her only friend, and--the rest is easy."

Poor Stephen!

Then he would give a pa.s.sing thought to Laura, and now and then would take from his pocket half a dozen letters, which she had written to him since the night of her journey to Hurst.

To not one of these had he replied, and the last was dated a week back.

"By this time," he thought, "she has forgotten me, or what is better, has learned that plain Stephen Davenant and Squire Davenant of Hurst Leigh are two very different men. Poor Laura! Well, well, I must do something for her. I'll make her a handsome present. Say a thousand pounds; perhaps find a husband for her. She's a sensible girl, too sensible to dream that I should think of marrying her now. After all, what harm is done? We were very happy, and amused ourselves with innocent flirtation. A mere flirtation, that is all."

And he tried to forget the pale face and flas.h.i.+ng eyes which turned toward him that night at parting with such a strange look of warning.

But he did not always succeed in forgetting. Sometimes the remembrance of that face rose like a vision between his eyes and the endless rows of figures, and made him shudder with mingled fear and annoyance.

"It has been a lesson to me," he would say, after awhile. "It is the only weakness I have ever been guilty of, and see how I am punished. I deserve it, and I must bear it."

It punished him, and it told upon him. The pallor which had come upon his face the day the will was read had settled there. The old look of composed serenity and "oiliness," as Jack called it, had gone, and in the place was a look of strained intentness, as if he were always listening, and watching, and waiting.

He was a fine actor, and would have made a fortune on the boards, and he managed to suppress this look at times, but the effort of suppression was palpable; he showed that he was affecting a calmness and serenity which he did not possess.

By two men, of all others, this change in him was especially noticed--by Mr. Hudsley and old Skettle.

The old lawyer and his clerk were necessarily with him every day; Stephen could not move a step without them. He hated Hudsley, whose keen, steel-like eyes seemed to penetrate to his inmost heart; and he detested Skettle, whose quiet, noiseless way of moving about and watching him from under his wrinkled lids, irritated Stephen to such an extent that sometimes he felt an irresistible desire to fling something at him.

But both of the men were indispensable to him at present, and he determined to wait until everything was straight before he cut all connections with them.

"Once let me get matters settled," he muttered to himself over and over again, "and those two vultures shall never darken my doors again."

And yet Hudsley was always scrupulously polite and civil, and Skettle always respectful.

With his characteristic graveness, Mr. Hudsley went through the work systematically and machine-like.

But Stephen noticed when he came to announce some fresh edition to the great Davenant property, he never even uttered a formal congratulation, or seemed pleased and gratified.

One day Stephen, nettled beyond his usual caution, said: "You must be tired of all this, Mr. Hudsley. I notice that it seems to annoy you."

And the old lawyer had looked up with grim impa.s.sibility.