“Let me hear all, then I can advise,” said Kenelm.
“John Conyers annoyed me,” she continued. “He spoke as though Ronald were under some obligation to him—as though he had some secret influence, knowledge, or power which gave him some hold over ‘The Willows.’ Now I cannot believe anything of that kind.”
“Nor can I,” said Kenelm. “I should say myself that Peter Gaspin has the greatest right to the farm.”
“So I should have thought, but John Conyers and his wife both assure me most solemnly that somewhere among Sir Ronald’s papers I shall find a written agreement that they shall have the farm as long as they live.”
“We must look and see. Of course, if there should be any document of the kind, it will settle the question without further trouble.”
And she assented, little dreaming that in doing so she was taking the first step toward a fatal discovery.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE DOWER HOUSE WATCHED.
Mr. Gerton, Kenelm Eyrle’s steward, land agent and general manager, smiled to himself to think how his patron and employer was gradually falling into a snare.
“He will marry the widow as sure as fate,” he thought to himself, “and we shall have something like old times at ‘The Towers.’ Mourning all his life for a dead woman who did not care for him is too ridiculous.”
Often when business required his presence at the Dower House, Mr. Gerton would plead most pressing engagements, and ask Kenelm to go in his place, then smile to himself as though he had done something very clever, for which he ought to be rewarded. He had all a business man’s contempt for sentiment and romance. He could understand marrying a handsome woman with a suitable fortune, who would be likely to do honor to the name she bore, but he could not understand wasting a life in lamenting and mourning over a dead love. Kenelm fell very unconsciously into the plot. Whenever Mr. Gerton asked him to go either to arrange one thing or another, he went. He went, too, very often when no business called him, for the purpose of talking to Mrs. Payton. One thing always amused him: Miss Hanson always received him with such a welcome, and with such a beaming, kindly smile.