The Silent Shore. John Bloundelle-Burton

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СКАЧАТЬ evening dress suits are not in much request. But I am very glad to be wearing one again, and once more talking to you."

      "Are you?" she said, raising her eyes and looking at him. She recalled how often they had talked together, and how she had taken pleasure in having him tell her of the different parts of the world he had seen; parts that seemed so strange to her who had never been farther away from home than the Tyrol or Rome.

      "Indeed I am! Do you think I should go to the Tropics for pleasure?"

      "I suppose you need not go unless you choose," she said; "surely you can do as you please!"

      "I can do as I please now," he answered, "I could not hitherto. I will tell you what I mean. Until a month ago the property I owned in Honduras required my constant attention, and necessitated my visiting the place once at least in every two years. But, of late, this has become irksome to me-I will explain why in a moment-and my last visit was made with a view to disposing of that property. This I have made arrangements for doing, and I shall go no more to that part of the world. Now," and his voice became very low, but clear, as he spoke, "shall I tell you why I have broken for ever with Honduras?"

      "Yes," she said. "You have told me so often of your affairs that you know I am always interested in them. Tell me."

      As she spoke, the band was playing the introduction to the last popular waltz, and the few couples who were in the conservatory left for it. A young man to whom Ida was engaged for this dance came in to look for her, but, seeing that she was talking to Walter Cundall, withdrew. It happened that he did not know she was betrothed to Lord Penlyn, but was aware that, last season, every one thought she would soon be engaged to the man she was now with. So he thought he would not disturb them and went unselfishly away, being seen by neither.

      Then, as the strains of the waltz were heard from the ball-room, he said:

      "It is because I want to settle down in England and make it my home. Because I want a wife to make that home welcome to me, because I have long loved one woman and have only waited until my return to tell her so. Ida, you are that woman! I love you better than anything in this world! Tell me that you will be my wife!"

      For answer she drew herself away from him, pale, and trembling visibly, and trying to speak. But no word came from her lips.

      "Why do you not answer me, Ida?" he asked. "Have I spoken too soon? But no! that is not possible-you must have seen how dearly I loved you! how I always sought your presence-you must-"

      Then she made a motion to him with her fan, and found her voice.

      "You cannot have heard," she said, "no one can have told you that-"

      "That what! What is there to tell? For God's sake speak, Ida!"

      "That I am engaged."

      "Engaged!" he said, rising to his feet. "Engaged! while I have been away. Oh! it cannot be, it is impossible! You must have seen, you must have known of my love for you. It cannot be true!"

      "It is true, Mr. Cundall."

      "True!" Then he paused a moment and endeavoured to recover himself. When he had done so he said very quietly, but in a deep, hoarse voice: "I congratulate you, Miss Raughton. May I ask who is the fortunate gentleman?"

      "I am engaged to Lord Penlyn."

      He took a step backward and ejaculated, "Lord Penlyn! Lord-"

      Then once more he recovered himself, and said: "Shall I take you back to the ball-room? Doubtless he is looking for you now."

      "I am very sorry for your disappointment," she said, looking up at him with a pale face; his emotion had startled her, "very sorry. I would not wound you for the world. And there are so many other women who will make you happy."

      "I wanted no other woman but you," he said.

      CHAPTER III

      Lord Penlyn and his friend and companion, Philip Smerdon, had returned from their yachting tour, which had embraced amongst other places Le Vocq, about a fortnight before Walter Cundall arrived in London from Honduras. The trip had only been meant to be a short one to try the powers of his new purchase, the Electra, but it had been postponed by the storm to some days over the time originally intended. Since he had become engaged to Ida Raughton, he naturally hated to be away from her, and, up till the night before he returned to England, had fretted a great deal at his enforced absence from her.

      But the discovery he had made in the Livre des Étrangers at Le Vocq, had had such an effect upon his thoughts and mind that, when he returned to England, he almost dreaded a meeting with her. He was an honourable, straightforward man, and, with the exception of being possessed of a somewhat violent and obstinate temper when thwarted in anything he had set his heart upon, had no perceptible failings. Above all he hated secrecy, or secrecy's next-door neighbour, untruth; and it seemed to him that, if not Ida, at least Ida's father, should be told about the discovery he had made.

      "With the result," said Philip Smerdon, who was possessed of a cynical nature, "that Miss Raughton would be shocked at hearing of your father's behaviour, and that Sir Paul would laugh at you."

      "I really don't see what there is to laugh at in my father being a scoundrel, as he most undoubtedly was."

      "A scoundrel!" Philip echoed.

      "Was he not? We have what is almost undoubted proof that he was living for two summers at that place with some lady who could not have been his wife, and whom he must have cast off previous to marrying my mother. And there was the child for whom the landlord took me! He must have deserted that as well as the woman. And, if a man is not a scoundrel who treats his offspring as he must have treated that boy, I don't know the meaning of the word."

      "As I have said before, it is highly probable that both of them were dead before he married your mother."

      "Nonsense! That is a very good way for a novelist to make a man get rid of his encumbrances before settling down to comfortable matrimony, but not very likely to happen in real life. I tell you I am convinced that, somewhere or other, the child, if not the mother, is alive, and it is horrible to me to think that, while I have inherited everything that the Occleves possessed, this elder brother of mine may be earning his living in some poor, if not disgraceful, manner."

      "The natural children of noblemen are almost invariably well provided for," Smerdon said quietly; "why should you suppose that your father behaved worse than most of his brethren?"

      "Because, if the estate had been charged with anything I should have known it. But it was not-not for a farthing."

      "He might have handed over to this lady a large sum down for her and for her son, when they parted."

      "Which is also impossible! He was only Gervase Occleve then, and had nothing but a moderately comfortable allowance from his predecessor, his uncle. He married my mother almost directly after he became Lord Penlyn."

      This was but one of half-a-dozen conversations that the young men had held together since their return from France, and Gervase had found comfort in talking the affair over and over again with his friend. Philip Smerdon stood in the position to him of old schoolfellow and playmate, of a 'Varsity friend, and, later on, of companion and secretary. Had they been brothers they could scarcely have been-would probably not have been-as close friends as they were.

      When they were at Harrow, and afterwards at Christ Church, Oxford, they had been inseparable, and, in point of means, entirely on an equality, СКАЧАТЬ