Mistress and Maid Part 27

He eyed it curiously round; and, lastly, with his most acute look he eyed herself, as if he wished to find out something from her manner, before going into further explanations.

But she stood before him a little uneasy, and yet not very much so.

The utmost she expected was some quarrel with her sister Selina; perhaps the breaking off of the match, which would not have broken Hilary's heart at all events.

"So you have really no idea what I'm come about!"

"Not the slightest."

"Well!" said Peter Ascott. "I hardly thought it; but when one has been taken in as I have been, and this isn't the first time by your family--"

"Mr. Ascott! will you explain yourself?"

"I will, ma'am. It's a very unpleasant business I come about; any other gentleman but me would have come with a police officer at his back. Look here, Miss Hilary Leaf--did you ever set eyes on this before?"

He took out his check book, turned deliberately over the small memorandum halves of the page, till he came to one in particular, then hunted in his pocket book for something.

"My banker sent in to-day my canceled checks, which I don't usually go over oftener than three months; he knew that, the scamp."

Hilary looked up.

"Your nephew, to be sure. See!"

He spread before her a check, the very one she had watched him write seven days before, made payable to "Ascott Leaf, or bearer," and signed with the bold, peculiar signature. "Peter Ascott." Only instead of being a check for twenty pounds it was for seventy.

Instantly the whole truth flashed upon Hilary: Ascott's remark about how easily the T could be made into an S, and what a "good joke" it would be; his long absence that night; his strange manner: his refusal to let her see the check again; all was clear as daylight.

Unfortunate boy! the temptation had been too strong for him. Under what sudden, insane impulse he had acted--under what delusion of being able to repay in time; or of Mr. Ascott's not detecting the fraud; or if discovered, of its being discovered after the marriage, when to prosecute his wife's nephew would be a disgrace to himself, could never be known. But there unmistakable was the altered check, which had been presented and paid, the banker of course not having the slightest suspicion of any thing amiss.

"Well, isn't this a nice return for all my kindness? So cleverly done, too. But for the merest chance I might not have found it out for three months. Oh, he's a precious young rascal, this nephew of yours. His father was only a fool, but he-- Do you know that this is a matter of forgery--forgery, ma'am," added Mr. Ascott, waxing hot in his indignation.

Hilary uttered a bitter groan.

Yes, it was quite true. Their Ascott, their own boy, was no longer merely idle, extravagant, thoughtless--faults bad enough, but capable of being mended as he grew older: he had done that which to the end of his days he could never blot out. He was a swindler and a forger.

She clasped her hands tightly together, as one struggling with sharp physical pain, trying to read the expression of Mr. Ascott's face. At last she put her question into words.

"What do you mean to do? Shall you prosecute him?"

Mr. Ascott crossed his legs, and settled his neckcloth with a self-satisfied air. He evidently rather enjoyed the importance of his position. To be dictator, almost of life and death, to this unfortunate family was worth certainly fifty pounds.

"Well, I haven't exactly determined. The money, you see, is of no moment to me, and I couldn't get it back any how. He'll never be worth a half-penny, that rascal. I might prosecute, and n.o.body would blame me; indeed, if I were to decline marrying your sister, and cut the whole set of you, I don't see," and he drew himself up, "that any thing could be said against me. But--"

Perhaps, hard man as he was, he was touched by the agony of suspense in Hilary's face, for he added.

"Come, come, I won't disgrace your family; I won't do any thing to harm the fellow."

"Thank you!" said Hilary, in a mechanical, unnatural voice.

"As for my money, he's welcome to it, and much good may it do him.

'Set a beggar on horseback, and he'll ride to the devil,' and in double quick time too. I won't hinder him. I wash my hands of the young scape-grace. But he'd better not come near me again."

"No," acquiesced Hilary, absently.

"In fact," said Mr. Ascott, with a twinkle of his sharp eye, "I have already taken measures to frighten him away, so that he may make himself scarce, and give neither you nor me any farther trouble. I drove up to your door with a policeman, asked to see Mr. Leaf, and when I heard that he was out--a lie, of course I left word I'd be back in half an hour. Depend upon it," and he winked confidentially, "he will smell a rat, and make a moonlight flitting of it, and we shall never hear of him any more."

"Never hear of Ascott any more?" repeated Hilary; and for an instant she ceased to think of him as what he was--swindler, forger, ungrateful to his benefactors, a disgrace to his home and family. She saw only the boy Ascott, with his bright looks and pleasant ways, whom his aunts had brought up from his cradle, and loved with all his faults--perhaps loved still. "Oh, I must go home. This will break Johanna's heart!"

Mr. Peter Ascott possibly never had a heart, or it had been so stunted in its growth that it had never reached its fair development.

Yet he felt sorry in his way for the "young person," who looked so deadly white, yet tried so hard not to make a scene, nay, when her two a.s.sistants came into the one little parlor, deported herself with steady composure; told them that she was obliged suddenly to go home, but would be back, if possible, the next morning. Then, in that orderly, accurate way which Peter Ascott could both understand and appreciate, she proceeded to arrange with them about the shop and the house in case she might be detained till Monday.

"You're not a bad woman of business," said he, with a patronizing air. "This seems a tidy little shop; I dare say you'll get on in it."

She looked at him with a bewildered air, and went on speaking to the young woman at the door.

"How much might your weekly receipts be in a place like this? And what salary does Miss--Miss What's-her-name give to each of you?

You're the head shop-woman, I suppose?"

Hilary made no answer: she scarcely heard. All her mind was full of but one thing: "Never see Ascott any more!"

There came back upon her all the dreadful stories she had ever heard of lads who had committed forgery or some similar offense, and, in dread of punishment, had run away in despair, and never been heard of for years--come to every kind of misery, perhaps even destroyed themselves. The impression was so horribly vivid, that when, pausing an instant in putting her books in their places, she heard the door bell ring Hilary with difficulty repressed a scream.

But it was no messenger of dreadful tidings, it was only Elizabeth Hand; and the quiet fas.h.i.+on in which she entered showed Hilary at once that nothing dreadful had happened at home.

"Oh no, nothing has happened," confirmed the girl. "Only Miss Leaf sent me to see if you could come home to night instead of tomorrow.

She is quite well, that is, pretty well; but Mr. Leaf--"

Here, catching sight of Miss Hilary's visitor, Elizabeth stopped short. Peter Ascott was one of her prejudices. She determined in his presence to let out no more of the family affairs.

On his part, Mr. Ascott had always treated Elizabeth as people like him usually do treat servants, afraid to lose an inch of their dignity, lest it should be an acknowledgment of equal birth and breeding with the cla.s.s from which they are so terribly ashamed to have sprung. He regarded her now with a lordly air.

"Young woman--I believe you are the young woman who this afternoon told me that Mr. Leaf was out. It was a fib, of course."

Elizabeth turned round indignantly. "No, Sir; I don't tell fibs. He was out."

"Did you give him my message when he came in?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And what did he say, oh?"

"Nothing."

This was the literal fact; but there was something behind which Elizabeth had not the slightest intention of communicating. In fact, she set herself, physically and mentally, in an att.i.tude of dogged resistance to any pumping of Mr. Ascott: for though, as she had truly said, nothing special had happened, she felt sure that he was at the bottom of something which had gone wrong in the household that afternoon.

It was this. When Ascott returned, and she told him of his G.o.dfather's visit, the young man had suddenly turned so ghastly pale that she had to fetch him a gla.s.s of water; and his Aunt Johanna--Miss Selina was out--had to tend him and soothe him for several minutes before he was right again. When at last he seemed returning to his natural self, he looked wildly up at his aunt, and clung to her in such an outburst of feeling, that Elizabeth had thought it best to slip out of the room. It was tea time, but still she waited outside for a half hour or longer, when she gently knocked, and after a minute or two Miss Leaf came out. There seemed nothing wrong, at least not much--not more than Elizabeth had noticed many and many a time after talks between Ascott and his aunts.

"I'll take the tea in myself," she said; "for I want you to start at once for Kensington to fetch Miss Hilary. Don't frighten her--mind that Elizabeth. Say I am much as usual myself; but that Mr. Leaf is not quite well, and I think she might do him good. Remember the exact words."