The Nether Millstone

by Fred M. White

"That is false," Mary cried passionately. "I am sacrificing everything for the honour of the house."

"Not from my point of view. As I said before, you are committing a great and deadly sin with your eyes open. At the altar you are prepared to soil your lips with a horrible perjury. You are going to promise to love, honour, and obey the man whose very presence makes you shudder. But, fortunately, there is no need for that. To all practical purposes you have ceased to be mistress of Dashwood, and when Mayfield knows this, he will dismiss you as a mere incident in his career. The new heir will take possession of the title and the property."

"I am glad we have got back to him again," Mary said coldly. "Your personal remarks are exceedingly distasteful to me. Who is the man you speak of?"

"Vincent Dashwood. Did you not guess it before? Has it never occurred to you that he had some powerful motive that kept him here all this time? You must be aware how Lady Dashwood dislikes him----"

"Oh, yes, yes. Several times lately I have asked who the man was, but I could not succeed in getting a satisfactory reply. I knew that Lady Dashwood was afraid of the man. He is not a bit like a gentleman, but seeing that he was a Dashwood, I have always been more or less civil to him."

"He does not think so," Ralph said with a smile. "In fact, he thinks that you have treated him very distantly and haughtily. He hinted to me that he was going to make you pay for it later. Still, a most objectionable creature."

"I seem to be surrounded with them lately," Mary said bitterly. "But why all this mystery and secrecy? If the man is the person he claims to be, why did he not make his identity known long ago? Oh, he is an impostor, defrauding Lady Dashwood. So long as he can get money out of her he will do nothing."

"Perhaps Lady Dashwood will enlighten us on that point," Ralph said. "I may say that in California I knew the late Ralph Dashwood very well. Had I not done so, I should not have been here on private business today----"

"Then you know if the late heir to the property had a son?" Mary interrupted.

"Certainly he did. And Vincent Dashwood claims to be Ralph's son. If he can prove this, then he takes the estates and the title. I have talked the matter over with him, and I gather that he is waiting for one particular document before claiming the property. The document is his mother's marriage certificate. You may say that that is easy to obtain. Not so in California, where records of that class are not kept so rigidly as they are here. Lady Dashwood will tell you that the young man came with the strongest proofs of his identity, letters that she had written to her son, and other papers of that kind. He knows all the secrets of the House. Lady Dashwood never catches him tripping."