‘His lordship is sure to be home before the winter, but if you wish to have this sum invested for you at once, I know I shall only be meeting his wishes in helping you to do so. Perhaps you would like me to put the money into the earl’s own coal mines, Miss Llewellyn. They are an excellent investment, and the shares are paying seven per cent., a rate of interest which you are not likely to get elsewhere. And it would have this further advantage, that in case of any unforeseen accident, or depreciation in the market, I feel sure the earl would never hear of your losing your money, whatever the other shareholders might do. The John Penn Mine is yielding wonderfully, so is the Llewellyn, which, if I mistake not, the earl called after yourself.’
‘Are you a man?’ demanded Nell, slowly raising her head, ‘or are you a devil? Cease chattering to me about your coal mines and shareholders! When I want to invest money, I shall not come to you to help or advise me. Do you suppose that I don’t know that if this letter speaks truth—that if my—if the earl contemplates doing what he says, it is not owing in a great measure to your advice and exhortations? You were for ever dinning the necessity of marriage into his ears. We have laughed over it together.’
‘Have you indeed? Well, I don’t deny it. I have done my duty by Lord Ilfracombe, and I’m very glad to find that my advice has had a good effect. You laughed too soon you see, Miss Llewellyn. But whatever influence has been brought to bear upon his lordship, the fact remains, that it has been successful, and he is about to be married—may even be married at the present moment. Nothing now remains to be done but for you to look at this settlement and decide how soon it will be convenient for you to leave Grosvenor Square.’
He laid the paper on her lap as he spoke, but Miss Llewellyn sprang to her feet, and, seizing the document in her strong grasp, tore it across and flung the fragments in the solicitor’s face.
‘Go back to your master!’ she exclaimed, ‘to the man who was good and true and honourable until your crafty advice and insinuations made him forget his nobler nature, and tell him to take his money and spend it on the woman he marries, for I will have none of it! Does he think he can pay me for my love, my faith, my honour? In God’s sight, I am the wife of Lord Ilfracombe, and I will not accept his alms, as if I were a beggar. For three years I have lived by his side, sharing all that was his—his pleasures, his troubles, and his pains. He has had all my love, my devotion, my duty! I have nursed him in sickness, and looked after his interests at all times, and I will not be remunerated for my services as if I were a hireling. Tell him I am his wife, and I throw his money back in his face. He can never pay me for what I have been to him. He will never find another woman to fill my place.’
‘But, my dear madam, this is folly! Let me entreat you to be reasonable,’ said Mr Sterndale, as he picked up the torn settlement. ‘You may have thought all this, but you know it is not tenable. You are not Lord Ilfracombe’s wife, and you never will be! You have been the most excellent of friends and companions, I admit that freely; but the time has come for parting, and the wisest and most sensible thing for you to do is to acquiesce in his lordship’s decision, and effect this little alteration in his domestic arrangements as quietly as possible. It must be, you know! Why not let it pass without scandal?’
‘We have not been only friends and companions,’ she repeated scornfully, ‘we have been the dearest and closest of lovers and confidantes. Oh, why should I speak to you of it? What should you know of such things? It is not in you to love anyone as I have loved Ilfracombe and he has loved me. But I do not believe your story, not even from the letter you showed me. I don’t believe he wrote it. You lawyers are cunning enough for anything. You may have forged his writing. So I reject your news and your settlement and yourself. Leave me at once and don’t come near me again. I will accept this assurance from no one but Ilfracombe, and I shall not quit his house till he tells me to do so. He left me in charge here, and I do not relinquish it till my master bids me go.’
‘He’ll bid you fast enough,’ replied the solicitor, as he gathered up his papers and prepared to leave her; ‘and it will be your own fault, Miss Llewellyn, if your exit is made more unpleasant to you than it need have been. The decorators will be in the house, probably, before you get any answer to your appeal to his lordship.’
‘Then I shall superintend the decorators,’ she said haughtily. ‘As long as anyone sleeps here, I shall sleep here, unless Ilfracombe himself tells me to go.’
‘Very ill-advised—very foolish,’ remarked Mr Sterndale; ‘but don’t blame me if you suffer for your obstinacy.’