‘Indeed, ma’am!’ exclaimed the man. ‘I always understood that Mr. Owen Charteris Sandbrook was heir to a considerable property.’
‘What of that?’
‘Only this, ma’am,—that I hold a bond from that gentleman for the payment of £600 upon the death of Miss Honora Charlecote, of the Holt, Hiltonbury, whose property I understood was entailed on him.’ His tone was still respectful, but his hand shook with suppressed rage, and his eye was full of passion.
‘Miss Charlecote is not dead,’ steadily answered Lucilla. ‘She is in perfect health, not fifty years old, and her property is entirely at her own disposal.’
Either the man’s wrath was beyond control, or he thought it his interest to terrify the lady, for he broke into angry complaints of being swindled, with menaces of exposure; but Lucilla, never deficient in courage, preserved ready thought and firm demeanour.
‘You had better take care,’ she said. ‘My brother is under age, and not liable. If you should recover what you have lent him, it can only be from our sense of honesty. Leave me your address and a copy of the bond, and I give you my word that you shall receive your due.’
The valet, grown rich in the service of a careless master, and richer by money-lending transactions with his master’s friends,
knew Miss Sandbrook, and was aware that a lady’s word might be safer than a spendthrift’s bond. He tried swaggering, in the hope of alarming her into a promise to fulfil his demand uninvestigated; but she was on her guard; and he, reflecting that she must probably apply to others for the means of paying, gave her the papers, and freed her from his presence.
Freed her from his presence! Yes, but only to leave her to the consciousness of the burthen of shame he had brought her. She saw why Owen thought himself past pardon. Speculation on the death of his benefactress! Borrowing on an inheritance that he had been forbidden to expect. Double-dyed deceit and baseness! Yesterday, she had said they were humbled enough. This was not humiliation, it was degradation! It was far too intolerable for standing still and feeling it. Lucilla’s impetuous impulses always became her obstinate resolutions, and her pride rebounded to its height in the determination that Owen should leave England in debt to no man, were it at the cost of all she possessed.
Re-entering the drawing-room, she had found that Owen had thrust the obnoxious letters into the waste-basket, each unopened envelope, with the contents, rent down the middle. She sat down on the floor, and took them out, saying, as she met his eye, ‘I shall take these. I know what they are. They are my concern.’