“But I will only marry Liane,” George cried, impetuously.
“My dear young man, yours is a mere foolish fancy. You cannot, nay you must not, render yourself a pauper merely because of this girl, who happens to have attracted you just for the moment. In a year’s time you will regard the matter from a common-sense point of view. Your proper course is to give up all thought of the young lady, and unite with me in the search for this mysterious Mariette Lepage.”
“I decline to abandon Liane,” George answered with promptness. “If I am a pauper, well, I must bear it. My ruin is, I suppose, the last of my father’s eccentricities. I’m the scapegoat of the family.”
“It is, nevertheless, my duty to advise you,” the elder man went on, standing before the empty fireplace with his arms folded. “In any case I shall be compelled to find this woman. Have you never heard your late father speak of any family of the name of Lepage?”
“Never. He has not been out of England for twenty years, therefore I suppose it’s someone he knew long ago. What could have been his object?”
“As far as I could glean it was twofold. First, he believed that the fact of having left this sum just beyond your reach would cause you intense chagrin; and, secondly, that if you did not marry this unknown woman, you will still be unable to marry the girl against whom he held such a strange deep-rooted objection.”
“Why did he object to her, Harrison? Tell me confidentially what you know,” urged the young man earnestly.
“I only know what he told me a few days ago,” the solicitor replied. “He said he had ascertained that you had taken many clandestine walks and rides with Liane Brooker, and he declared that such a woman was no fitting wife for you.”
“Did he give any further reason?” the other demanded.
“None. He merely said that if you declined to abandon all thought of her you should not have a penny.”
“And he has kept his word,” observed George, gloomily.
“Unfortunately it appears so.”
“He was unjust – cruelly unjust!” George protested. “I strove hard at the Bar, and had already obtained a few briefs when he recalled me here to be his companion. He would not allow me to follow my profession, yet he has now cast me adrift without resources.”
“You certainly have my entire sympathy,” the old lawyer declared, kindly. “But don’t take the matter too much to heart. The woman may be already married. In this case you will receive fifty thousand.”
George’s face relaxed into a faint smile.
“I have no desire to hear of or see the woman at all,” he answered. “Act as you think fit, but remember that I shall never offer her marriage – never.”
“She may be a pretty girl,” suggested the elder man.
“And she may be some blear-eyed old hag,” snapped the dead man’s son. “It is evident from the wording of the clause that my father has heard nothing of either mother or daughter for some years.”
“That’s all the more in your favour; because if she is thirty or so, the chances are that she is married. At all costs we must discover her.”
“The whole thing is a confounded mystery,” George observed. “Who these people are is an enigma.”
“Entirely so,” the solicitor acquiesced. “There is something exceedingly mysterious about the affair. The combined circumstances are bewildering in the extreme. First, the lady you admire bears a French name, next your father hates her because of some fact of which he is aware regarding her family, and thirdly, in order to prevent you marrying her, he endeavours by an ingenious and apparently carefully-planned device, to induce you to wed a woman whose existence is unknown to us all. He was not a man who acted without strong motives, therefore I cannot help suspecting that behind all this lies some deep mystery.”
“Mystery! Of what character?”
“I have no idea. We must first find Mariette Lepage.”
“My future wife,” laughed George bitterly, rising wearily from his chair.
“Yes, the woman who is to receive twenty thousand pounds for marrying you,” repeated the solicitor smiling.
“No, Harrison,” declined the young man as he moved slowly across the room with head slightly bent. “I’ll never marry her, however fascinating she may be. Liane is pure and good; I shall marry only her.”
And opening the door impatiently he snatched up his cap, strode along the hall, and out to where his man held the bay mare in readiness.
“Ah, well!” Harrison muttered aloud when he was alone. “We shall see, young man. We shall see. I thought myself as shrewd as most men, but if I’m not mistaken there’s a mystery, strange and inexplicable, somewhere; a mystery which seems likely to lead to some amazing developments. It’s hard upon poor George, very hard; but if my client was so foolish as to desire the family skeleton to be dragged from its chest his kith and kin must of necessity bear the consequences.”
With a word to Morton, most exemplary of servants, George sprang into the saddle, and a moment later was galloping down the long straight avenue. The brilliant afterglow had now faded, dusk had fallen, and he feared that Liane, having kept the appointment, would have left disappointed and returned home. Therefore he spurred the mare onward, and was soon riding hard towards the unfrequented by-road known as Cross Lane.
With a heavy heart he told himself that he must say good-bye to love, good-bye to hope, good-bye to ambition, good-bye to all of life except the dull monotonous routine of empty days, and a restless empty heart.
“I can’t tell her I’m a pauper,” he murmured aloud, after galloping a long way in dogged silence. “She’ll know, alas! soon enough. Then, when the truth is out, she’ll perhaps discard me; while I suppose I shall go to the bad as so many fellows have done before me. Of what use am I without the means to marry? To love her now is only to befool her. Henceforth I’m sailing under false colours. Yet I love her better than life; better than anything on earth. I’m indeed a beggar on horseback!”
And he laughed a hollow bitter laugh as he rode along beneath the oaks where the leafy unfrequented lane dipped suddenly to pass below the railway, the quiet lonely spot where, unobserved, he so often met his well-beloved. So engrossed had he been in his own sad thoughts that the stumbling of the mare alone brought him back to a consciousness of things around. The light had paled suddenly out of the evening atmosphere; the gloom was complete. Eagerly he looked ahead, half expecting to catch a glimpse of her well-known neat figure, but in disappointment he saw her not. It was too late he knew. She had evidently waited in vain, and afterwards returned to the village when the dusk had deepened.
Still he rode forward, the mare’s hoofs sounding loudly as they clattered beneath the archway, until suddenly, as he emerged on the other side, a sight met his gaze which caused him to pull up quickly with a loud cry of dismay.
In the centre of the road, hidden from view until that instant, by reason of the sudden bend, a girl was lying flat with arms outstretched, her face in the thick white dust, while beside her was her cycle, left where it had fallen.
Instantly he swung himself from the saddle, dashed towards her, and lifted her up. Her straw hat had fallen off, her fair hair was dishevelled, and her dark skirt covered with dust. But there was yet another thing which held him transfixed with horror. In the dim fast-fading light he noticed that her blouse bore at the neck a small stain of bright crimson.
It was Nelly Bridson. She was rigid in death. The pallor of her refined, delicate face was rendered the more ghastly by the blood that had oozed from the corners of her arched mouth. Her small gloved hands were tightly clenched, her features haggard, convulsed and drawn by a last paroxysm of excruciating agony.
In her soft white neck was an ugly bullet wound. She had been shot by an unknown hand.
Chapter