Torwood's trust

by Evelyn Everett-Green

aud’s birthday had come at last—the important four-and-twentieth anniversary, which completed her long minority.

She had requested that there should be no great ‘fuss’ upon the day. She did not want any festivities set on foot, or a number of guests to entertain. It would be much more of a treat to her, she said, to have ‘a good long day with Phil;’ and in the evening was the necessary dinner-party, to which the Belassis household was invited, which was to be followed by the reading of Mr. Debenham’s will.

Maud’s decision would be asked at the close, and it was generally understood that her mind was made up, although opinions differed as to what was the decision arrived at.

Mr. and Mrs. Belassis were distinctly anxious, now that the final moment had come. They had terrible misgivings as to the validity of the will which they were about to produce, and could not rid themselves of the ghastly notion, that at the last moment their terrible nephew might coolly produce a later document, and demand instant restitution of the trust-money, principal and interest.

Mrs. Belassis was certain that no formal or public search had been made in the library; but she could have no confidence, until the will was in her own hands, that some evil chance might not discover it to the very people whose knowledge of its existence was most to be deplored.

Increased uneasiness had fallen upon Mrs. Belassis, she hardly knew why, by the knowledge that Miss Marjory Descartes was a guest at Ladywell. Personally she was rather glad of this, for on thinking over the conversation with her husband, she was not entirely satisfied with the explanation he had given her of his connection with Whitbury and she looked forward with a mixture of malice and curiosity to the meeting between them, which she would now witness. Yet some instinct warned her that Miss Marjory’s visit to her nephew boded them no good; and she was made additionally uneasy by the hints dropped by her spy, of the long consultations now going on in the house.

But Mrs. Belassis did not give way to dejection. She felt she had a game offensive as well as defensive to play, and she believed that she would find an able supporter in Signor Pagliadini.

‘Once let this decision be made, and I shall know how to act,’ she said many times to herself. ‘If Maud refuses Lewis, then there is no longer any reason to temporize. I shall worm the truth out of that Italian, and then carry open war into the enemy’s quarters.’

Mr. Belassis was miserable and anxious, but he was not in his wife’s confidence, and he did not know what schemes of vengeance were brewing. He did not know the close proximity of his old friend Miss Marjory Descartes; had he done so, he would have been tenfold more miserable and cowed. His wife, by a little dexterous management, had contrived that the names of the guests at Ladywell should not be mentioned in his hearing, for she was anxious that the meeting with Miss Marjory should take him unawares; besides which, she knew he was quite capable of shamming illness, just to escape the encounter, if it was not to his mind. The more she had thought about his behaviour when first he heard Whitbury named, and the story he had told her of his doings there, the more she grew convinced that she had not been told the whole truth.