“And the property, Sir! What are your views respecting the estate?”
“I shall write to you. I’ll think of it,” said Harry, carelessly. After a few words more, they parted. Harry had some things to buy in the city, some small preparations for the long voyage before him; but, promising Cane to come back and take a family dinner with him, he went his way. For some hours he walked the streets half unconsciously, a vague impression over him that there was something he had to do, certain people to see, certain places to visit; but so engaged was he with the thought of Kate and her fortunes, his mind had no room for more. “She shall see,” muttered he to himself, “that I am not to be shaken off. My Luttrell obstinacy, if she will call it so, is as fixed as her own. Country has no tie for me. Where she is, there shall be my country.” Some fears he had lest Cane should tell her of his determination to sail in the same ship with her. She was quite capable of outwitting him if she could only get a clue to this. Would Cane dare to disobey him? Would he face the consequences of his betrayal? From these thoughts he wandered on to others—as to how Kate would behave when she found he had followed her. Would this proof of attachment move her? Would she resent it as a persecution? Hers was so strange a nature, anything might come of it. “The same pride that made her refuse me, may urge her to do more. As she said so haughtily to me at Arran, ‘The peasant remedy has failed to cure the Luttrell malady; another cure must be sought for!’”
Harry had scarcely knocked at Cane’s door, when it was opened by Cane himself, who hurriedly said, “I have been waiting for you. Come in here;” and led him into his own room. “She’s above stairs. She has just come,” whispered he.
“Who?” asked Harry, eagerly. “Who?”
“Your cousin—Miss Luttrell. A letter from the surgeon of the convict-ship has conveyed news of old Malone’s death, and she has come up to free herself from her arrangement with the captain. And——”
He stopped and hesitated with such evident confusion, that Harry said, “Go on, Sir; finish what you were about to say.”
“It is her secret, not mine, Mr. Luttrell; and I know it only through my wife.”
“I insist on hearing it. I am her nearest of kin, and I have a right to know whatever concerns her.”
“I have already told you what I promised to keep secret. I was pledged not to say she was here. I came down to make some excuse for not receiving you to-day at dinner—some pretext of my wife’s illness. I beg, I entreat you will not ask me for more.”
“I insist upon all you know,” was Harry’s stern reply.