“Wouldn’t build on that if I were you. Chaps don’t play those silly sort of games. Good night.”
And: “I know why, right enough,” reflected Luke, in the passage; “but I wasn’t going to tell her. By gum, though! fancy a fellow actually doing it....”
In Luke’s pocket, a column of “Mine and Yours,” marked in red pencil, discoursed eloquently on the Utopian conditions to be attained by mankind, when those unfairly in possession of unearned increment, should voluntarily fling their wealth into a common pool, that it might be divided into equal shares for all. The discourse wound up, with unconscious humour, by the remark:—“But alas! only we who are willing to share our sixpences have as yet seen the light; those with pounds weighing down their pockets, turn their faces stubbornly away. And we labour on....”
Luke re-read all this, carefully; hallucination pointing with her forefinger along the printed lines.—“By gum!” he muttered again. And his eyes were those of a disciple who has at length sighted the master....
CHAPTER VI
“TO TEST HER LOVE”
“Of course I know why,” reflected Letty; “but I wasn’t going to tell him.”
But it was the need to express the joyous and amazing romance of this which Sebastian had done, and the rejection of each confidant in turn as “not able to understand,” that had prompted Letty to cover so many sheets of paper with her round schoolgirlish handwriting, and to head these scrawlings with the title: “To Test Her Love,” A Story. By Lettice Johnson.
The hero of her tale, one Geoffrey Challoner of Challoner Park, becomes enamoured of Mavice, a village maiden; and is goaded by the sneers of his wicked cousin Jasper (—“You fool! she loves you only because you are the Lord Geoffrey!”—) into putting her love to the test by pretending to the discovery of hidden papers whereby Jasper (of the younger branch of the family) is proved master of Challoner Park in his stead, and he a mere pauper. Affairs at this juncture grow complicated; as Mavice, unshaken in her love for Geoffrey, is yet forced to jilt him, without giving a reason, in favour of Jasper, who most unfortunately holds in his power the honour of Cyril, Mavice’s younger brother, a weakling and a craven. With a bitter: “You were right, Jasper; and I a fool to think any girl, even the fairest, free from worldly motives!” Geoffrey departs for the populous Bush, leaving Jasper in unlawful possession of Challoner Park and Mavice’s broken heart.