“For Heaven’s sake don’t joke about it, Lilian,” he interrupted, in a pained voice. “For it amounts to this, that I have simply been robbing you all these years—robbing you—you, whom I would have given the last drop of my heart’s blood to shield from a single want. All this time, while you have been fighting a hard battle alone and unaided, I have been literally robbing you of your own. Good Heavens! the very idea is enough to make a fellow cut his throat.”
“You were not robbing me of anything of the sort. Don’t be absurd, you dear old goose! But, darling, you don’t know how pleased I am that you should take this from me now, even though it is like giving you back what belongs to you,” she added, lovingly.
“But, upon my soul, I don’t understand it yet,” he repeated, amazedly. “Who on earth was that old parson who came badgering me one morning? I thought he was the next in reversion.”
“‘That old parson,’ as you so disrespectfully term my dear old uncle, George Wainwright, went to you on my behalf, Arthur,” she answered, with a smile. “I tried to prevent him, but he would go. He failed, for you stuck to it like a leech,” she concluded, with a merry laugh.
“Heavens! Of course I thought he was speaking for himself. He never mentioned you.”
“Didn’t he? That’s so like Uncle George! And when I asked him who you were, he had forgotten your name. Said it was Clinton, or something like that.”
“But, Lilian, is this the first you’ve heard of the rights of the affair? Didn’t you ever suspect anything?”
A soft smile stole over her face. “I did once,” she replied, “long ago—here. Something Mrs Brathwaite was telling us about you gave me a sort of an inkling.”
“Oh, but this is simply dreadful! How could I have any idea how things stood? I never saw the will, and never heard the name of the next in reversion. ‘A distant relative’ was all that old Smythe said. But I’ll write to the parson, Mr—what’s his name?—Wainwright, and get him to tell you all that passed between us. I’ll—”
“I’m afraid not. Poor Uncle George died four years ago,” she answered. “But, darling, don’t take things to heart like this. I only see it in an amusing light. Isn’t it a queer chapter of coincidences?”