AN EVIL INHERITANCE

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 35, 9 February 1917, Page 8

AN EVIL INHERITANCE

By W. E. NORRIS, Author of "The Square Peg," "Not Guilty," "Pauline," CHAPTER XXll.—(Continued.) Five ie never a very comfortable number for conversational purposes, nor were the four persons whom Mrs. Lynden had assembled at a round table no circun»tanced as to be able to converse freely. Two ot" them, that is to say, were~ embarrassed by consciousness of a common secret, while the remaining couple had been privately cautioned by Sylvia against alluding to matters which everybody in th* neighbourhood was discussing. This being so, the most had to be made of the sharp frost which had again 6et in, the disgraceful condition of the roads, the spread of influenza, and Mrs. Cotton's approaching sale of work. By way of compensation tiie food and wine were alike excellent; so the Rector, who despised neither of these things, did not feel, when the ladies rose, that his evening was being misspent. He proceeded to improve it by crossing his legs and saying confidentially to his neighbour: "I do wish that you, who are a friend of Geoffrey's, could persuade the lad to do the wisest thing he can by returning to his old love." " If you mean Miss Lynden," said Harry, " I don't think that's quite a ! correct description of her." " It isn't far aetray; they looked aa much like lovers as anybody could wish until there came the other attraction that nve know of. Well, we're all liable to these passing aberrations when we're young, and I understand that the extinguisher has been put upon him now; so why shouldn't he come back to his right mind?" " Aren't you making rather sure of •M 338 Lynden?" "To tell you the truth, I am sure of her. Her mother has only to say, ' Do so-and-so or I shall die,' and she'll do what she's asked, whether it's marrying Geoffrey Alder or jumping off the roof of the house. That girl's devotion to her mother is one of the most extraordinary and beautiful things I've ever seen in my lafe." Extraordinary it might be; as to the beauty of it, there was room, Harry thought, for difference of opinion. He observed that the question was not, after all, one of life or death. " Mrs. Lynden, I fancy, would tell you that it is. She may not be as ill as she thinks herself; still she has been badly shaken by all that she. has gone through and she has taken it firmly into her head that she will be allowed no peace until this place has been restored, directly or indirectly, to the Alders." " I daresay," answered Harry, " she won't get much peace as long as these evasive enemies of hers remain at large; but" . . . The entrance of the servants with coffee caused him to break off. Was it imagination on his part, or did the melancholy Guiseppe fix a penetrating gaze upon him, as though aware of what he had been talking about? Either way, he was determined to get a-sight of Guiseppe's hand before leaving the house; so he had recourse to stratagem which might possibly, with luck, serve the required purpose. While helping himßelf to coffee, he flicked the ash from his cigarette in an upward direction, and had great apparent difficulty in removing a portion of it from his eye. " Permit mc, sir," murmured Guiseppe, anticipating an appeal which was upon the point of being addressed to him, and forthwith the corner of a napkin, moistened in a .finger glass, accomplished what was needed. The thing was done with a deft promptitude which reflected credit upon the operator; but in order to do it he had slipped off his glove, time revealing the white cicatrix of some old wound which ran diagonally across the back of his hand from the knuckles to the wrist. "Got you, my boy!" said Harry exultantly to himself, while smilingly expressing his thanks aloud. After this, further discussion with the Rector upon the subject of Mrs. Lynden's tormentors had not much interest for •him. It was an established fact that her acting butler was one of them, and it was a fact which Harry deemed it wise to keep provisionally to himself. Whether it was altogether wise to let the man Btay another night in the house might be doubtful; yet the difficulty of ejecting him was manifest, inasmuch as Mrs. Lynden assuredly would not believe in his guilt. Giuseppe would have to be confronted on a sudden with Geoffrey; to denounce him at once upon the strength of what was certain to be adjudged a mere coincidence would only be to set an evidently bold and capable fellow on his guard. In the meantime there was that '"little private talk" with his hostess to be faced—a talk of which the outcome was rendered somewhat dubious by the equanimity with which she appeared to await it. She could not think that she was going to be worsted; possibly she knew that she was not. Good, obtuse Mrs. Cotton remained immovable for a long time; but at last she decided to weigh anchor, and when ■she and her husband had been escorted out of the room by Sylvia, who did not return, Mrs. Lynden motioned to Harry to sit down beside her. "Now, dear Mr. Marsh," she began, with no inflection of animosity in her voice, "I'm going to be quite candid with you. That sounds like saying that I'm going to .be disagreeable, doesn't it? But I don't want to be disagreeable. Disperhaps I daresay you can understand that." "I absolutely understand it," Harry assured her; "I feel that I have been a traitor to you." Mrs. Lynden sighed. "Oh, no, you're not a traitor; you weren't pledged to mc in any way. I don't suppose you went and lost' your heart to Sylvia in order to distress mine; I don't suppose you meant to lose your" heart to her at all. These things happen because they have to happen, and because nobody can prevent them from happening." "That's just it," said Harry. "So there's really no reason to be as penitent as perhaps you are and as poor, clear Sylvia is. I told her she had nothing to be penitent about. There may be something to be sorry for, don't you think 60? —something, at any rate, that I may be allowed to be sorry for." "Of course there is," assented Harry, both surprised and touched by the reasonableness of her attitude, "and as far as it's possible for mc to be sorry, I'm sorry too. But your plan, let mc tell you, could never have worked. Sylvia simply couldn't have accepted Geoffrey." "Sylvia would do a good deal for mc." "I know she would; but it would have been atrocious of her to do that, and atrocious of you to ask such a thing of . her." "Ah, there it is! One lias to draw the line at atrocities. My plan was an ideal one; but, as you gay, it couldn't, from ,the moment that you came in as such a

disturbing factor, have been made real. I dismiss it—l put it away altogether." "You are very generous!" exclaimed Harry gratefully. "On the contrary," returned Mrs. Lynden smiling, "that is what I am going to ask you to be. I am going to ask you to renounce for Sylvia and yourself all' claim to succeed mc here. You allow mc —don't you see? —no alternative. Sylvia won't really want the place, for she will have my fortune, such as it is, and I feel, rightly or wrongly—no, I won't say that, because I haven't a doubt about its being rightly—that I ought to leave Tranton to Nicholas Alder or his eon." "I quite agree," said Harry, without hesitation. "Then we're quits! If I'm a generous person — but I'm afraid I'm not — you're another! I've only one more small request to make. I roust beg you not to speak of your engagement. Let it be between ourselves for the present." A little less pleased with this stipulation, yet not seeing his way to demur, after so much had been unexpectedly conceded to him, Harry replied, "Very well." "Not for long," Mrs. Lynden ex plained; "only until —until I see how things will go. The truta is that I built upon this match as a means of making my peace with Nicholas Alder. Implacable though he is, I didn't see how Iho could hold out after my daughter I became his daughter-in-law. But now I'm afraid he may look upon your engagement to Sylvia as one more instance of my perfidy." "How can he, when he was well aware that Geoffrey was crazy about Miss Rowe? You don't suggest that he had any hand in disposing of that affair, do you?" "I have told you before that I am positive he has had no hand in any of these villainies. All the same, he would bfe ready to believe anything that he wanted to believe about me —that is, anything against mc." "Not, surely, if he were told that you had executed a will in his favour!" "But he can't be told that until the will has been executed. Then I shan't mind his hearing that you are to marry Sylvia. My idea was that if he could be told at the same time of these things and of how ill I am, his eyes might be opened to the truth at last, and I should die in peace." "Oh, you won't die for a great many years yet, Mrs. Lynden," Harry confidently and cheerfully predicted. "That is as may be. I am worse than you think and' worse than Dr. Palliscr thinks; although another reason for my begging for delay is that I want to hear what he has up his sleeve. There's something he wouldn't say when he was here the other day." "Something about the people who have been attacking you, do you mean?" "Oh, no; what should he know about them? Stil they stand fOr a third reason, if you want a third. They have granted mc a truce of late, as you know. That, I am sure, is because they suppose that I am working for the same end as they are. When they discover that there is to be no marriage between Geoffrey and Sylvia, won't they fall upon mc with greater fury than ever?" Harry exhorted Mrs. Lynden to banish such notions. He reminded her of the courage which she had hitherto shown, and stated his personal conviction that her ordeal was unlikely to be renewed. He could not refrain f.'om winding up with —"I'm going to collar those gentry for you." "I don't think you are," she returned, with a faint smile; "I don't think anybody ever will. You would call mc absurd, no doubt, if 1 were to confess that I have sometimes fancied there might be a supernatural element in it all." "I certainly should," answered Harry uncompromisingly. "Explosives are compounds of natural substances and beings who can pinion Geoffrey Alder are human, even if they do rig themselves up in masks and dominos. For the rest, I have a very firm disbelief'in the occurrence of any supernatural phenomena on the surface of this planet." "You leave a good many things unexplained at that rate," observed Mrs. Lynden. "It doesn't follow that they are inexplicable," he rejoined. But it was too late, and Mrs. Lynden was obviously too tired, for abstract discussion. She bade him good-night almost affectionately, thanked him for yielding to her wishes, was thanked in her turn (as indeed Harry felt that she deserved to be), and hoped that she had said nothing to imply that her future 6on-in-law was otherwise than personally acceptable to her. So the interview came to an end. AU things considered, the young man was warranted in telling himself that he emerged from it with colours flying.