“You see, Sir, she is obstinate,” said Mr. Cane to Harry Luttrell, as they sat closeted together in his private office. “She is determined to make over the Arran estate to you, and equally determined to sail for Australia on the 8th of next month.”
“I can be obstinate too,” said Harry, with a bent brow and a dark frown—“I can be obstinate too, as you will see, perhaps, in a day or two.”
“After all, Sir, one must really respect her scruples. It is clear enough, if your father had not believed in your death, he never would have made the will in her favour.”
“It is not of that I am thinking,” said Luttrell, with a tone of half irritation; and then, seeing by the blank look of astonishment in the other’s face that some explanation was necessary, he added, “It was about this foolish journey, this voyage, my thoughts were busy. Is there no way to put her off it?”
“I am afraid not. All I have said—all my wife has said—has gone for nothing. Some notion in her head about the gratitude she owes this old man overbears every other consideration, and she goes on repeating, ‘I am the only living thing he trusts in. I must not let him die in disbelief of all humanity.’” Harry made a gesture of impatient meaning, but said nothing, and Cane went on: “I don’t believe it is possible to say more than my wife has said on the subject, but all in vain; and indeed, at last, Miss Luttrell closed the discussion by saying: ‘I know you’d like that we should part good friends; well, then, let us not discuss this any more. You may shake the courage I shall need to carry me through my project, but you’ll not change my determination to attempt it.’ These were her last words here.”
“They were all the same!” muttered Harry, impatiently, as he walked up and down the room. “All the same!”
“It was what she hinted, Sir?”
“How do you mean—in what way did she hint it?”
“She said one morning—she was unusually excited that day—something about the wilfulness of peasant natures, that all the gilding good fortune could lay on them never succeeded in hiding the base metal beneath; and at last, as if carried away by passion, and unable to control herself, she exclaimed, ‘I’ll do it, if it was only to let me feel real for once! I’m sick of shams!—a sham position, a sham name, and a sham fortune!’”
“I offered her the share of mine, and she refused me,” said Luttrell, with a bitterness that revealed his feeling.