"Respect my confidence," she said gravely. "I may rely on that?"
"Absolutely," he answered. "I never interfere with other people's private business. It's not my form; and, besides, I'm so grateful to you for recognising me that I'm not going to forfeit a good thing."
Mrs. Sinclair was satisfied. She rang the bell for the maid to open the door, and smiled graciously upon her nephew.
"I hope you're going to be a great success," she said, as he rose to go. "There is an element of romance in the way fate has brought us together that is fascinating, and really you are a very creditable nephew."
Melville smiled sardonically. His aunt's husband held such a different opinion!
"I am a particularly fortunate one, I think," was all he said, and as he went out into the Fulham Road he thought the sun had never shone so brightly. Fortune had turned her wheel again, and his gambler's soul exulted.
CHAPTER VI.
BRAVADO.
It was, indeed, with a very similar sense of satisfaction to that enjoyed by a man who, when playing cut-throat euchre, finds the joker in his hand, that Melville contemplated the advent of Mrs. Sinclair into his life. In many respects she was a charming woman; vigorous and resourceful in consequence of her somewhat adventurous career, but womanly and free from affectation. Moreover, if she could not claim entire exoneration from the charge of being an adventuress, she was entitled to several important limitations in the term; she gambled, it is true, and led an extravagant life, but she did both out of her own resources, and did not prey upon society as do most of the evening-gowned frequenters of the Casino. What other skeletons might be hidden in the secret cupboard of her life, Melville did not yet trouble to surmise; he assumed that among them was the grisly relic of her marriage with his uncle. The marriage had been a failure; the couple had separated and agreed to let the story be forgotten; "Sinclair" was merely a nom-de-guerre, and everything was capable of a perfectly satisfactory explanation, with the exception of her financial independence. Melville could not understand the feeling which prompted her to refuse assistance from her husband, more especially in such a case as this, where she might dictate her own terms for consenting to suppress the fact of her existence. What her motive was in so doing was one of the first things Melville intended to ascertain; there might be money in the knowledge. But the first thing he intended to do was to tell Sir Geoffrey that he knew this amazing secret of the marriage, for he felt convinced that he could make money by holding his tongue on that subject to the world at large.
Such were the thoughts that passed through Melville's mind as he walked from the station to The Grange at Fairbridge, where the Austens lived. With him to decide was to act, and the previous night he had resolved to adopt a bold policy and face Sir Geoffrey and Ralph at once; they had had time to compare notes about the hundred pounds, and a stormy interview with them both was inevitable, but it possessed no terrors for Melville now. He guessed correctly that for the credit of the family neither of them would detail the facts to the Austens, with whom he was particularly anxious to stand well. Too selfish a man to be capable of real love for any woman, he yet liked Gwendolen better than any other woman he had ever seen, and he was quite willing to "range himself" if she would be his wife. That she was engaged to his brother troubled him very little. Engagements had been broken off before now, and the idea of cutting Ralph out had a certain piquancy that rendered the attempt worth making.