"He had brought the new suit of clothes with him, and he had placed the brown paper parcel on the table and was now untying it. Her face turned to a deadly whiteness when the suit was exposed.
"'You have nothing to fear,' said our reporter. 'I have brought this with me to convince you how necessary it is that you should have by you a friend as sincere as I.'
"He then related to her what had passed between him and the inspector with reference to the suit which had been found in the river, and also the particulars of his visit to the clothing establishment in Tottenham Court Road.
"In the interests of our readers we withhold a categorical account of the conversation which ensued. Sufficient for the present to state that the lady placed in this reliable gentleman the most implicit confidence. Our narrative now assumes another shape. A strange and pathetic drama is about to be unfolded. The veil which enshrouds the past will be uplifted, and we owe our reporter our grateful thanks for the manner in which he has chosen to narrate as touching a story as has ever been presented to the readers of fiction. It links the past with the present, and it is true to the life. For a little while our reporter and ourselves disappear from the scene. We may revert hereafter to our original plan--indeed we may be compelled to revert to it in this way because the matters of which we shall have to speak are public property. What follows is a literal copy of the manuscript supplied by our reporter; not an incident is exaggerated, not a passion disfigured. Step by step, with unswerving zeal and untiring devotion, the Mystery of M. Felix is being unravelled and brought to light."
[BOOK SECOND.]
A LIFE DRAMA: LINKS IN THE MYSTERY.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
THE HALF-BROTHERS.
"It is better to be born lucky than rich" is one of the few proverbs to which the lie cannot be given by a proverb in the opposite direction. If Gerald Paget had had the choice, and had he been blessed with wisdom, he would have chosen luck in the place of riches, but he could not be credited with either of these conditions. He was born to riches, and he was too amiable and easy-natured to ripen into wisdom. When he first met Emilia Braham he was twenty-four years of age; she was eighteen, and in a position of dependence; Gerald was wealthy, and to a certain extent his own master. His father had died three months before this meeting with the beautiful young girl, whose association was to bring into his life both happiness and woe. He had only one close relative, a half-brother, a few years older than himself, who was then absent in Australia; the name of this brother was Leonard, and it was he who was destined to hold in his hands the skeins of Gerald's fate.
Their father had been twice married, and Leonard was the son of his first wife. She brought him no fortune, and he himself had but little. Shortly after Leonard was born she died, and the widowed husband went with his child to Switzerland, where he met with the lady who was to replace the wife he had lost. She possessed a large fortune in her own right, of which with her husband's full approval, she kept control. Although they had met and were married in Switzerland, they were both English, and to England they returned, and set up their home there. One child blessed their union, Gerald, whom they idolized and did their best to spoil. They did not neglect their duty to Leonard; they performed it cheerfully and lovingly, but it was nevertheless the fact that Gerald was the magnet to which their hearts more constantly turned. The difference between the ages of the half-brothers was a bar to that close and sympathetic association of interests which frequently exists between children of equal age. The child of six and the child of fourteen have little in common; still less when one is twelve and the other twenty. But despite this disparity and these unfavorable conditions, Gerald adored his big brother, and bowed down before him as a being of a very superior order. Leonard's tastes was for travel, and as a young man he spent much of his time on the Continent, picking up foreign ways, and also foreign vices, which he kept very carefully concealed from the knowledge of his father and step-mother. When he came home from these Continental jaunts he always brought with him remembrances for little Gerald, whose affectionate, grateful heart magnified their value, and invested with rare qualities the spirit which animated the giver. Leonard was supplied with ample funds to indulge in his whims and pleasures, and he took life easily, accepting it as his right that his purse should be always well filled. Presently, however, a change came over the spirit of his dream, a change which caused the evil forces within him to spring into active life. His stepmother died, and left a will. Its terms were as follows: