Her face brightened. "Then you need not talk about starving," she said, gaily.
"And, later, I shall have altogether about a thousand a-year. Though I hope it will be very long before it falls to me. Do you think two people might venture to set up at Peac.o.c.k"s Range, and keep, say, a couple of servants upon four hundred a-year? Could they exist upon it?"
"Oh, dear, yes," she answered eagerly, quite unconscious of his drift.
"Did you mean yourself and some friend?"
He nodded.
"Why, I don"t see how they could spend it all. There"d be no rent to pay. And just think of all the fruit and vegetables in the garden there!"
"Then I take you at your word, Alice," he cried, impulsively, pa.s.sing his arm round her waist. "You are the "friend." My dear, I have long wanted to ask you to be my wife, and I did not dare. This place, Leet Hall, enc.u.mbered me: for I feared the opposition that I, as its heir, should inevitably meet."
She drew away from him, with doubting, frightened eyes. Mr. Harry Carradyne brought all the persuasion of his own dancing blue ones to bear upon her. "Surely, Alice, you will not say me nay!"
"I dare not say yes," she whispered.
"What are you afraid of?"
"Of it altogether; of your friends. Captain Monk would--would--perhaps--turn me out. And there"s Mrs. Carradyne!"
Harry laughed. "Captain Monk can have no right to any voice in my affairs, once he throws me off; he cannot expect to have a finger in everyone"s pie. As to my mother--ah, Alice, unless I am much mistaken, she will welcome you with love."
Alice burst into tears: emotion was stirring her to its depths.
"_Please_ to let it all be for a time," she pleaded.
"If you speak it would be sure to lead to my being turned away."
"I _will_ let it be for a time, my darling, so far as speaking about it goes: for more reasons than one it may be better. But you are my promised wife, Alice; always recollect that."
And Mr. Harry Carradyne, bold as a soldier should be, took a few kisses from her unresisting lips to enforce his mandate.
IV
Some time rolled on, calling for no particular record. Mr. Hamlyn"s West Indian property, which was large and lucrative, had been giving him trouble of late; at least, those who had the care of it gave it, and he was obliged to go over occasionally to see after it in person. Between times he stayed with his wife at Peac.o.c.k"s Range; or else she joined him in London. Their town residence was in Bryanston Square; a pretty house, but not large.
It had been an unfavourable autumn; cold and wet. Snow had fallen in November, and the weather continued persistently dull and dreary. One gloomy afternoon towards the close of the year, Mrs. Hamlyn, shivering over her drawing-room fire, rang impatiently for more coal to be piled upon it.
"Has Master Walter come in yet?" she asked of the footman.
"No, ma"am. I saw him just now playing in front there."
She went to the window. Yes, running about the paths of the Square garden was the child, attended by his nurse. He was a st.u.r.dy little fellow. His mother, wishing to make him hardy, sent him out in all weathers, and the boy throve upon it. He was three years old now, but looked older; and he was as clever and precocious as some children are at five or six. Her heart thrilled with a strange joy only at the sight of him: he was her chief happiness in life, her idol. Whether he would succeed to Leet Hall she knew not; since that one occasion, Captain Monk had said no more upon the subject, for or against it.
Why need she have longed for it so fervently? to the setting at naught the express wishes of her deceased uncle and to the detriment of Harry Carradyne? It was simply covetousness. As his father"s eldest son (there were no younger ones yet) the boy would inherit a fine property, a large income; but his doting mother must give him Leet Hall as well.
Her whole heart went out to the child as she watched him playing there.
A few snowflakes were beginning to fall, and twilight would soon be drawing on, but she would not call him in. Standing thus at the window, it gradually grew upon her to notice that something was standing back against the opposite rails, looking fixedly at the houses. A young, fair woman apparently, with a profusion of light hair; she was draped in a close dark cloak which served to conceal her figure, just as the thick veil she wore concealed her face.
"I believe it is _this_ house she is gazing at so attentively--and at _me_," thought Mrs. Hamlyn. "What can she possibly want?"
The woman did not move away and Mrs. Hamlyn did not move; they remained staring at one another. Presently Walter burst into the room, laughing in glee at having distanced his nurse. His mother turned, caught him in her arms and kissed him pa.s.sionately. Wilful though he was by disposition, and showing it at times, he was a lovable, generous child, and very pretty: great brown eyes and auburn curls. His life was all sunshine, like a b.u.t.terfly"s on a summer"s day; his path as yet one of roses without their thorns.
"Mamma, I"ve got a picture-book; come and look at it," cried the eager little voice, as he dragged his mother to the hearthrug and opened the picture-book in the light of the blaze. "Penelope bought it for me."
She sat down on a footstool, the book on her lap and one arm round him, her treasure. Penelope waited to take off his hat and pelisse, and was told to come for him in five minutes.
"It"s not my tea-time yet," cried he defiantly.
"Indeed, then, Master Walter, it is long past it," said the nurse. "I couldn"t get him in before, ma"am," she added to her mistress. "Every minute I kept expecting you"d be sending one of the servants after us."
"In five minutes," repeated Mrs. Hamlyn. "And what"s _this_ picture about, Walter? Is it a little girl with a doll?"
"Oh, dat bootiful," said the eager little lad, who was not yet as advanced in speech as he was in ideas. "It says she----dere"s papa!"
In came Philip Hamlyn, tall, handsome, genial. Walter ran to him and was caught in his arms. He and his wife were just a pair for adoring the child.
But nurse, inexorable, appeared again at the five minutes" end, and Master Walter was carried off.
"You came home in a cab, Philip, did you not? I thought I heard one stop."
"Yes; it is a miserable evening. Raining fast now."
"Raining!" she repeated, rather wondering to hear it was not snowing.
She went to the window to look out, and the first object her eyes caught sight of was the woman; leaning in the old place against the railings, in the growing twilight.
"I"m not sorry to see the rain; we shall have it warmer now," remarked Mr. Hamlyn, who had drawn a chair to the fire. "In fact, it"s much warmer already than it was this morning."
"Philip, step here a minute."
His wife"s tone had dropped to a half-whisper, sounding rather mysterious, and he went at once.
"Just look, Philip--opposite. Do you see a woman standing there?"
"A woman--where?" cried he, looking of course in every direction but the right one.
"Just facing us. She has her back against the railings."
"Oh, ay, I see now; a lady in a cloak. She must be waiting for some one."
"Why do you call her a lady?"
"She looks like one--as far as I can see in the gloom. Does she not?
Her hair does, any way."
"She has been there I cannot tell you how long, Philip; half-an-hour, I"m sure; and it seems to me that she is _watching_ this house. A lady would hardly do that."
"This house? Oh, then, Eliza, perhaps she"s watching for one of the servants. She might come in, poor thing, instead of standing there in the rain."