“You know how I dread the courts, Samuel. Let me first try suasion.” In emotionful appeal she turned to Jane. “For sake of the dear, dead sister who was your mother, I beg you, as one who has tried to take a mother’s place, to give up this ill-timed attack of folly and this impossible man. Perhaps you inherited the tendency, for she also made a sad mistake in choosing her mate.”
“She did?” the “orphan” asked quietly, her eyes on the velvet hangings of the hall door.
“In marrying a Lauderdale—practically a pauper despite the family obsession of their claim to vast estates in the Borough of the Bronx—she ruined her life. She, too, became obsessed through his power to control her thoughts. Her life, as well as his, was one long nightmare of crown-grants, wills, deeds, what-nots. She died of it, dear, just as your father afterwards went down under disgrace and gloom. Now you, child, stain your white hands with this black magic. Excited by the craze for adventure of this person, you let yourself be led into indiscretions that bid fair to ruin you. Why not give him up now—this morning? I’ll stand by you no matter what is said.”
“Me, too, dar-rling,” chimed in Irene. “I’ll soon be a matron, you know, and I’ll find you some adequate male, up-to-date though honest, whom we’ll persuade to forget and forgive.”
Aunt Helene, her breath regained, pleaded further: “Listen to this before you leap, my child. Despite what your grandfather left in the way of puzzle-charts, Judge Allen and I, acting in your interest, have at last satisfied ourselves that there is nothing—quite nothing of the slightest material value to you buried in Central Park. We didn’t intend to tell you so soon, but all last night the judge had a crew of men working at a spot indicated in the cryptogram.”
“And how did he get the instructions of the cryptogram?” Jane enquired. “No one saw it before it was stolen but me.”
“Jane, that you should speak to me in that suspicious tone! Had I been given opportunity, I should have told you that yesterday the contents of your antique snuff-box were secretly exchanged for the large reward which I offered in your name, presumedly by the thief who stole it from my safe.”
“You don’t say, ma’am? So! It was, eh?” The Westerner was rather explosive from acute interest.
The matron ignored him. “The judge, Jane, followed directions and discovered a crock—large and open topped, like the sort dill pickles are made in. But, alas, it contained nothing but a half-witted old man’s keepsakes—scraps of his unutterable poetry, ribbon-tied parcels of yellowed love-letters, pressed flowers and a wisp of some woman’s hair. Were your father alive, I’d feel I should take some of my own fortune and make restitution of his frauds upon the collateral heirs. But since he’s dead and gone, I don’t exactly feel——”
“Not altogether gone, Helene, yet not in need of your restitution!”