Jaquetta used to wonder at them, and then try to go
on the same as usual; and would wander about the garden
and park with her dogs, and bring us in little anecdotes,
and do all the laughing over them herself. Poor
child! she felt as if she were in a bad dream, and
these were efforts to shake it off, and wake herself.
After all, nothing was ever so bad as those ten days!
But, my brother always said he was thankful for the
respite and time for thought which they gave him.
The end came suddenly at last, when we were thinking
my dear father more tranquil. He passed away
in sleep late one evening, just ten days after Hester’s
arrival. She had gone back to her lodgings, and
we did not send to tell her till the morning; but by
nine o’clock she was in the house.
We had crept down to breakfast, Jaquetta and I, feeling
very dreary in the half-light, and as if desolation
had suddenly come on us; and when we heard her fly
drive up to the door, Jaquetta cried out almost angrily,
“Torwood, how could you!” and we would
have run away, but he said, “Stay, dear girls;
it is better to have it over.”
As she came in he rang the bell as if for family prayers,
and she had only asked one or two questions, which
he answered shortly, when all the servants came in,
some crying sadly. Fulk read a very few prayers—as
much as he had voice for, and then, as all stood up,
he had to clear his voice, but he spoke firmly enough.
“It is right that you all should know that a
grave doubt has arisen as to my position here.
Lord Trevorsham had every reason to believe his first
wife had perished by the hands of the Red Indians long
before he married my mother. What he did was
done in entire ignorance—no breath of blame
must light on him. This lady alleges that she
can produce proofs that she is his daughter, and that
her mother only died in February, ’36.
If these proofs be considered satisfactory by a committee
of the House of Lords, then she and Alured Torwood
Trevor will be shown to be his only legitimate children.
I shall place the matter in the right hands as soon
as possible—that is” (for she was
glaring at him), “as soon as the funeral is
over. Until that decision is made I request that
no one will call me by the title of him who is gone;
but I shall remain here to take care of my little
brother, whose guardian my father wished me to be;
and for the present, at least, I shall make no change
in the establishment.”
I think everyone held their breath: there was
a great stillness over all—a sort of hush
of awe—and then some of the maids began
sobbing, and the butler tried to say something, but
he quite broke down; and just then a troubled voice
cried out—
“Torwood, Torwood, what is this?”
And there we saw Bertram in the midst of us, with
the haggard look of a man who had travelled all night,
and a dismayed air that I can never forget.
