Alick Lester
He was a man of honour, of noble and generous nature.'—Longfellow.
Mr. Alick Lester proved to be a pleasant, frank young fellow, with the sunniest eyes and smile that Agatha had ever seen. She took to him at once, and found herself telling him without any hesitation the history of the lost packet. He listened attentively, but was indignant when Agatha hinted that Watson might have acted under the major's instructions.
'No, Miss Dane, my uncle is a gentleman. He would never stoop so low as that. I know he tried to blacken my dear father's character, but he idolized his son, and hardly realized the mischief he was doing. Watson is a thorough scoundrel! I have always known it, and my uncle has already dismissed him for tampering with some of his letters. He was telling us about it last night, and Watson leaves him at the end of this week. Depend upon it, the chap was trying to get the papers in his own hands for ends of his own, and I think you were awfully plucky to catch him at it as you did. But now we must get hold of him at once, and get the packet from him.'
'I expect he will have left the neighbourhood,' said Agatha. 'If you wish to open the cupboard, my sister will tell you the secret. She has accidentally discovered it. Shall we go to the study now?'
The young man agreed at once to this proposal, and when Clare came forward, he looked at her with secret laughter in his eyes.
'They say a woman never rests content under a mystery,' he said; 'and you have proved my good angel, so I can only avow my gratitude. But do you know that from a boy I have viewed that cupboard as impenetrable as the sphinx itself? And yet my energy or ambition to solve its secret was never sufficient to allow me to succeed. My father always told me that age had some advantages, and that when the time came for me to know all that he did, I should do so.'
Clare flushed and felt very uncomfortable; then she met the young man's gaze calmly.
'I know I have shown the weakness of our sex, but it is not often one is brought into contact with such a mystery; and having had your father's Arabic motto translated to me, I could not resist the temptation of trying to prove its truth. I need not say I have not opened the cupboard. That temptation I was enabled to resist.'
'And the motto?' inquired the young man, passing his hand almost tenderly over his father's handiwork, and a shade coming over his brow as he spoke.