He spoke without bitterness, without a hint of self-pity, and she was silent. He was the child of a second marriage, and that had made it worse for him. When old Lord Chelford followed Dick’s mother to the grave, the second son’s portion was his. The estate, the title, the very car he had used as his own, passed from him. A tiny estate in Hertfordshire that brought two hundred a year, some old jewellery of his mother’s and a thousand pounds came the way of the second son. And the thousand pounds had never been paid. In some mysterious fashion it had been swallowed up.
Mr. Arthur Gwyn had settled the estate. In all the circumstances Dick felt happier when he did not think of that thousand pounds. Yet, for some reason or other, he thought of it now, and as though she read his thoughts dimly, and associated his reserve with her brother, she asked:
“You don’t like Arthur, do you?”
“What makes you say that?” he said, in genuine surprise. He had never betrayed his aversion to the dandified lawyer.
“I know,” she nodded wisely. “He exasperates me sometimes, and I can well imagine that a man like you would hate him.”
Dick smiled.
“Harry doesn’t hate him anyway, and he is the person who counts.”
She looked round at him, swinging the crop idly.
“It doesn’t seem real to me that I’m to be married at all--it was such a funny proposal, Dick, so polite, so formal, so--unreal! I think if it had come in any other way----” She shook her head.
Dick wondered a little drearily how his brother would propose. Harry was something of a novice at the love game; once he had had a pretty secretary, and on a warm June afternoon Dick had interrupted what was tantamount to a proposal from the enterprising young lady. And the flustered Harry would have agreed to her matrimonial suggestions, only Dick had happened along--and the calculating Miss Wenner had left Fossaway Manor rather hurriedly. He remembered this happening.
“I suppose if he had proposed in the conventional way you wouldn’t have accepted him?”
“I don’t know,” she said dubiously. “But it was quaint and--queer. I like Harry awfully. I have often wondered if he would like me if----” She did not finish her sentence.
“If you weren’t so horribly rich?” smiled Dick. “You’re not paying him a very high compliment.”
She held out her arms and he lifted her down, though there seemed no necessity for it, as she was a very agile young person as a rule.
“Dick,” she said, as he crossed the stile and they walked side by side toward the main road, “what am I to do?”
“About what?” he asked.
“About Harry and everything.”
He had no answer to this.
“Arthur is very keen on my marrying him,” she said. “And really, I’m not averse--at least, I don’t think so.”
“That is the worst of being a great heiress,” he bantered.
“I wonder?” Her brow wrinkled in a frown. “And am I a great heiress?”
He stopped and looked at her in surprise.
“Aren’t you?”
He seemed so shocked that she laughed.
“I don’t know; my uncle left me a lot of money years and years ago. I don’t know how much--Arthur has managed my estate for years. I have all the money I need.”
“Then don’t grouse!” he said crudely, and she laughed again.
“I suppose most girls in my position have their marriages arranged in the way mine has been arranged, and until quite recently I have accepted the idea as part of the inevitable.”
“And why have you changed your mind now?” he asked bluntly, and saw the pink come into her face.
“I don’t know.” Her answer was very short, almost brusque.
And then she saw the look in his eyes--the infinite yearning, the hopelessness of them. And in a flash there came to her a knowledge of herself.
For some reason which she could not understand she became of a sudden breathless, and almost found a difficulty in speaking. She felt that the thump and thud of her heart must be audible to his ears and strove desperately to recover her balance. Vividly before her eyes came the picture of her fiancé, the thin, irritable young man--the weakling with all that man needed in his hands, save manhood. A pitiable, nerve-racked creature, now pleading, now bullying--oblivious of the impression he made on the woman who was to share his life. And from this mental figure of him, her eyes moved mechanically to the man by her side; calm, serene, radiant in his strength and self-reliance.
Ten minutes later she was walking back to Willow House, and in her heart she struggled with a problem that seemed well-nigh insoluble.
Dick Alford, making his slow progress homeward, saw the lank figure of his brother waiting at the end of the elm drive.
The wind flapped the skirts of his long frock coat; standing, he stooped slightly and had a trick of thrusting forward his head, which gave him the appearance of a big, ungainly bird. His face was dark with anger, Dick saw, as he came up with him.
“I deputize many duties to you, Richard, but I’ll do my own love-making, understand that!”
The blood came into Dick Alford’s face, but he showed no other sign of his hurt or anger.
“I will not have it--you understand?” Lord Chelford’s voice was shrill with childish fury. “I will not have you interfering in my private affairs. You sent one girl away from me, you shall not take Leslie!”
“I am not----” began his brother hotly.
“You are--you are! You don’t want me to marry! I am not a fool, Dick! You stand next in the line of succession! I am going to marry Leslie Gwyn--understand that! You shall not break that engagement.”
For a moment the brutality, the injustice of the accusation, left the younger man white and shaking, and then, with a supreme effort, he laughed. Scenes such as this were of almost daily occurrence, but never before had Harry Chelford gone so far. In ten minutes the storm would pass, and Harry would be his old lovable self, but for the moment it was bitterly hard to bear.
“Why do you say such horrible things?” he said. “I got rid of Wenner because she was not the wife for you----”
“You didn’t want me to marry! You are waiting for my shoes, a dead man’s shoes!” almost screamed the elder son. “The last thing in the world you want to see is a new Countess of Chelford. You know it, you know it!”
Dick Alford was silent. God knew his brother spoke the truth! It would be a woeful day for him when Harry Chelford brought a wife to this great house to share the dreadful secret which hung like a cloud over Fossaway Manor.
