"Don't mention it, Fred; I wish you'd come oftener and try it."
John Hubbard straightened himself up in the wide easy chair, and prepared to receive his brother's disclosures or questions on a matter which was deeply interesting to them both. John was very unlike his stout, pompous brother; a thin little man, with grey hair and grey eyes; troubled by a certain twitching of the eyebrows, and affected generally by a weak and extremely nervous constitution. An avaricious man who sees his younger brother become possessed of thirty thousand a year, which he himself expected to get, generally exhibits other than fraternal feelings; but whatever John Hubbard may have felt, the fact remains, that so soon as his brother Frederick became the undoubted owner of this money, he, John, began to observe towards him a severe deference and courtesy. When the Count went to dine at Rose Villa, there were no tricks played upon him in the matter of wine. The claret-cup was not composed of "sudden death," at ten shillings a dozen, with a superabundance of water, and cucumber peel instead of borage. The dry sherry was not removed with the fish, in the hope that the dulled after-dinner palate might accept some Hambro' decoction with equanimity. One wine was pretty much the same as another wine to the Count von Schönstein; but he was pleased to know that his brother thought so much of him as to be regardless of expense.
"Are you quite sure, Jack," said the younger brother, drawing his chair near, "that nobody, beyond those you mentioned to me, knows who Miss Brunel is?"
"As far as I know, Fred; as far as I know," said the other, in an injured querulous tone. "I can't hold myself responsible, and I'm not infallible."
"In a matter of this kind," said the Count, smiling benignly, "most people seem to think that Cayley and Hubbard are infallible. They say you are the repositories of all the scandals of the aristocracy; and that you might turn England upside down by publishing what you know. But I daresay that's exaggerated. Now, don't you think that some one who remembers that story of twenty-five years ago, and happens to see Miss Brunel, might recognise the resemblance between her and her mother, and then begin to inquire into the affair?"
There was a strong twitching of John Hubbard's eyebrows. He was far from being a good-tempered man; and to be compelled to sit and play the hypocrite was almost too much for him. He saw clearly whither these questions tended. He knew his brother's ruling passion; he knew there was nothing he would not do to be admitted among those people who had refused to recognise his purchased title. Again and again he had inwardly cursed his folly in telling the Count the story of Annie Napier and her daughter; that breach of professional confidence was likely to lose his family thirty thousand a year. Can one conceive a more tantalising position for a narrow-minded and avaricious man to assume than the involuntary prompting and guidance of a scheme which is likely, in the most gratuitous way, to deceive his own most dearly cherished hopes? If some one else had suggested to the Count a marriage with Miss Brunel as a possible passport to society, John Hubbard would not have been so chagrined. He would have been able to dissuade his brother from the step with such reasons as he could discover. But he had himself told the Count the real history of Annie Brunel; he was compelled to furnish him with all sorts of information; and saw, through his own instrumentality, that money slipping out of his fingers which otherwise might have been his or his son's.
"I have explained it to you before, Fred," he said, patiently. "Old Mr. Cayley, who went out to America to see the Marquis of Knottingley's wife, lives down in Suffolk, where he is not likely to meet people who have much interest in Miss Brunel. Besides, he has a very fine sense of honour in these matters, and would not break a pledge he gave to Miss Brunel's mother, not to seek in any way to induce her daughter to leave the stage. And you know the people who knew of the marriage were very few; and most of them are dead. Mr. Palk is in his dotage, and lives in Westmoreland. Then who is likely to remember Miss Napier's appearance: or to perceive a likeness between her and Miss Brunel beyond the casual likenesses which occur constantly on the stage? I believe I could count on my ten fingers all the people who know who Miss Brunel really is. There's my wife – one; old Mr. Cayley – two; Cayley, my partner – three; you yourself – "
He stopped; for his brother was evidently not listening to him. So pre-occupied was the Count, indeed, that he broke the ash off the end of his cigar upon the edge of his wine-glass, allowing the ash to fall into the port.
"I hope I haven't poisoned you with some of my wines," said John Hubbard, with a thin laugh.
"I beg your pardon!" said his brother, reaching over for another glass; "I really didn't know what I was about. The whole affair seems to me so romantic and impossible – like a play, you know, or something of that sort. I can scarcely believe it; and yet you lawyer fellows must sometimes meet with such cases."
"I have one of my people down in Southend just now, trying if he can trace anything about a woman and her child who, we believe, lived there eighteen years ago. If we find her, a curious story will come out. But I never in the whole course of my life heard of any woman, except Miss Napier, who refused a title and a fortune, which were by right her own. I suppose the common-sense of actresses gets poisoned by the romantic sentiment in which they live and breathe."
"If you mean as regards money," said the Count, with a patronising smile, "I can assure you that most actresses have an uncommonly small proportion of sentiment and a very tolerable share of sense. Miss Brunel's mother must have been an extraordinary woman in many respects – what you and I would consider a fool, though many people would give her folly a fine name. Now, about revealing this secret, to Miss Brunel, don't you think some of the Marquis's relatives might do that?"
"They would cut their fingers off first," said John Hubbard, with nervous decision. "They knew every action of her mother after she left this country – so old Mr. Cayley told me; they now watch her daughter closely, and try to discover everything they can about her; and their intensest hope is that she may never learn what a splendid property lies at her command, so that it may revert to them or their heirs, as the will directs. And what a property it is, Fred!"
"Ah! I suppose so," said the Count, with a sigh.
To do him justice, he did not consider so much as another might have done the money he would get by marrying Miss Brunel: his desire to marry her was wholly selfish, but the selfishness was begotten of no greed of money.
"The trustees are as diligent in looking after the property as though it were to be given up to-morrow. And how those rents accumulate! It was Lord Belsford who proposed to use up some of the money in buying off the mortgages which still hung over the Northamptonshire estate from the time of the Marquis's father; and now that has been done, it is nothing but a huge machine turning out money for nobody's use."
The little nervous lawyer seemed to be quite overwhelmed by the contemplation of such a thing. If he had had the option of becoming the proprietor of this valuable coining machine, he would not have allowed the opportunity to pass. And even now it occurred to him that in the event of his brother marrying Miss Brunel, and acquiring this vast wealth, the Count might, out of gratitude for the service done him in the matter, leave his thirty thousand pounds a year to the young gentleman in the adjoining drawing-room. The alternative was possible, but it was remote; John Hubbard would vastly have preferred his brother remaining unmarried.
"You know why I am so anxious to know all about this matter, Jack," said the Count, uneasily.
His brother nodded.
"It is a hazardous thing – seems to me almost impossible," continued the Count – and he was never tired of reiterating his doubts on the subject – "that such a fortune and title should belong to anybody without their knowing it."
"It was her mother's wish," said John Hubbard.
"Oh, I know," said the Count, "that she has been brought up to regard with apprehension every one out of her profession; and I know she believes that under no circumstances ought she to leave the stage. And yet I fancy she will not be very grateful either to her mother, or to old Mr. Cayley, or to the trustees, for keeping her in ignorance of her good fortune. And if she should consent to be my wife, she will probably accuse me of having used the secret for my own purpose."
The Count spoke as if such an accusation would do him a great injury. But the possibility of the future he had chalked out for himself drove