“Am I really that great lord’s grandchild?” she gasped forth with evident effort.
“You are so beyond all question,” returned the lawyer. “You are undoubtedly the daughter of Aveline Beatrice Ethalwood, who ran away from home with her music master. You are the grandchild of Lord Ethalwood, the master of Broxbridge and its rich dependencies. The child playing there (pointing through the window of the apartment to the little boy on the grass plot) may be one day an earl, and you yourself may be a wealthy heiress; but I regret to say that there is one condition attached to all this.”
“A condition!” she replied, her face recovering its colour, her eyes flashing light. “I am bound to accept the condition, I suppose? You do not know how I have always longed to be rich and great.”
The lawyer smiled.
“It is not for me to dictate. I have only to make the proposition, which it will rest with you to either accept or refuse.”
She looked surprised and said—
“There will be no condition too difficult for me to accept.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Mr. Chicknell. “Lord Ethalwood is a very proud man—I should say no man living is prouder. He has the greatest reverence for what he calls the honour of his house. Think how he valued it when he treated his daughter as one dead because she married beneath her. I will be explicit and plain-spoken—the exigencies of the case necessitate my being so. Lord Ethalwood will receive you as his grandchild; will give you a large fortune; will make your son his heir; all, upon one condition.
“And what is that?”
“That you will leave your husband, whom he considers low-born, and promise never to see him again.”