When Mr. Bonnithorne left the charcoal pit, he followed the road that crossed the Newlands Beck, and returned on the breast of the Eel Crags. This led him close to the booth where the sports were proceeding. He heard, as he passed, the gurgling laugh with which the dalesfolk received the peddler's story of how he saw Paul Ritson at Hendon. A minute afterward he encountered Hugh Ritson on the road. There was only the most meagre pretense at greeting when these men came face to face.
"Your father sent for me," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
"On what business?" Hugh Ritson asked.
"I have yet to learn."
They walked some steps without speaking. Then the lawyer turned with his constant smile, and said in his soft voice:
"I have just seen your little friend. She looks pale, poor thing! Something must be done, and shortly."
Hugh Ritson's face flushed perceptibly. His eyes were on the ground.
"Let us go no further in this matter," he said, in a low tone. "I saw her yesterday. Then there is her father, poor, broken creature! Let it drop."
"I did not believe it of you!" Mr. Bonnithorne spoke calmly and went on smiling.
"Besides, I am ashamed. The thing is too mean," said Hugh Ritson. "In what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode occur?"
"So, so! Or is it the story of the cat in the adage? You would and you wouldn't?"
"My blood is not thick enough. I can't do it."
"Then why did you propose it? Was it your suggestion or mine? I thought to spare the girl her shame. Here her trouble must fall on her in battalions, poor little being. Send her away, and you decimate them."
"It is unnecessary. You know I am superior to prejudice." Hugh Ritson dropped his voice and said, as if speaking into his breast: "If the worst comes to the worst, I can marry her."
Mr. Bonnithorne laughed lightly.
"Ho! ho! And in what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode occur?"
Hugh Ritson drew up sharply.
"Why not? Is she poor? Then what am I? Uneducated? What is education likely to do for me? A simple creature, all heart and no head? God be praised for that!"
At this moment a girl's laugh came rippling through the air. It was one of those joyous peals that make the heart's own music. Hugh Ritson's pale face flushed a little, and he drew his breath hard.
Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head in the direction of the voice, and said softly: "So our friend Greta is here to-day?"
"Yes," said Hugh Ritson very quietly.
Then the friends walked some distance in silence.
"It is scarcely worthy of you to talk in this brain-sick fashion," said Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a dull irritation in the tone. "You place yourself in the wrong point of view. You do not love the little being."
Hugh Ritson's forehead contracted, and he said: "If I have wrecked my life by one folly, one act of astounding unwisdom, what matter? There was but little to wreck. I am a disappointed man."
"Pardon me, you are a very young one," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
"What am I in my father's house? He gives no hint of helping me to an independence in life."
"There are the lands. Your father must be a rich man."
"And I am a second son."
"Indeed?"
Hugh Ritson glanced up quickly.
"What do you mean?"
"You say you are a second son."
"And what then?"
"Would it be so fearful a thing if you were not a second son?"
"In the name of truth, be plain. My brother Paul is living."
Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head twice or thrice, and said calmly: "You know that your brother hopes to marry Greta?"
"I have heard it."
Again the flush came to Hugh Ritson's cheeks. His low voice had a tremor.
"Did I ever tell you of her father's strange legacy?"
"Never."
"My poor friend Robert Lowther left a legacy to a son of his own, who was Greta's half-brother."
"An illegitimate son?"
"Not strictly. Lowther married the son's mother," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
"Married her? Then his son was his heir?"
"No."
Hugh Ritson looked perplexed.
"The girl was a Catholic, Lowther a Protestant. A Catholic priest married them in Ireland. That was not a valid marriage by English law."
Hugh smiled grimly.
"And Lowther had the marriage annulled?"
"He had fallen in love," began Mr. Bonnithorne.
"This time with an heiress?" There was a caustic laugh.
Mr. Bonnithorne nodded. "Greta's mother. So he—"
"Abandoned the first wife," Hugh Ritson interrupted again.
Mr. Bonnithorne shook his head with an innocent expression.
"Wife? Well, he left her."
"You talk of a son. Had they one?"
"They had," said Mr. Bonnithorne, "and when the woman and child … disappeared—"
"Exactly," said Hugh Ritson, and he smiled. "What did Lowther then?"
"Married again, and had a daughter—Greta."
"Then why the legacy?"
"Conscience-money," said Mr. Bonnithorne, pursing up his mouth.
Hugh Ritson laughed slightly.
"The sort of fools' pence the Chancellor of the Exchequer receives labeled 'Income Tax.'"
"Precisely—only Lowther had no address to send it to."
"He had behaved like a scoundrel," said Hugh Ritson.
"True, and he felt remorse. After the second marriage he set people to find the poor woman and child. They were never found. His last days were overshadowed by his early fault. I believe he died broken-hearted. In his will—I drew it for him—he left, as I say, a sum to be paid to this son of his first wife—when found."
Hugh Ritson laughed half mockingly.
"I thought he was a fool. A scoundrel is generally a fool as well."
"Generally; I've often observed it," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
"What possible interest of anybody's could it be to go hunting for the son of the fool's deserted wife?"
"The fool," answered Mr. Bonnithorne, "was shrewd enough to make an interest by ordering that if the son were not found before Greta came of age, a legacy of double the sum should be paid to an orphanage for boys."
Hugh Ritson's respect for the dead man's intelligence experienced a sensible elevation.
"So it is worth a legacy to the family to discover Greta's half-brother," he said, summing up the situation in an instant. "If alive—If not, then proof that he is dead."
The two men had walked some distance, and reached the turning of a lane which led to a house that could be seen among the trees at the foot of a ghyll. The younger man drew up on his infirm foot.
"But I fail to catch the relevance of all this. When I mentioned that I was a second son you—"