“You should not allow yourself to regard it.”
“No, perhaps I should not, if I had only myself to consider. But such whisperings can be extremely mischievous. My brother John, for instance, might find them embarrassing, and I have no desire to throw any rub, however unwitting, in his way. And Nicky—no, Nicky would never bear to hear me slandered!” He broke off, as though recollecting that he was addressing a stranger, and said abruptly, “The simplest way to put a stop to all this nonsense is to provide my cousin with a wife, and that is what I am determined to do.”
“But I do not properly understand, sir! If, as you say, your cousin dislikes you, why should he not himself look about him for a wife? He cannot wish you to inherit his possessions!”
“Not at all. But not all the representations of his doctor have been enough to convince him that his life is not worth the purchase of a guinea. He considers that there is time and to spare before he need burden himself with a wife.”
“If this is so, how have you been able to persuade him to be married to some unknown female whom, I collect, you have found for him through advertisement? It must be preposterous!”
“I have said that I will meet his present debts if he does so.”
She regarded him with some shrewdness. “But he would be left with the burden of a wife on his hands. Or have you also undertaken to provide for this unfortunate female, sir?”
“Of course,” he said matter-of-factly. “There has been no suggestion on my part that the marriage should be more than a form. Indeed, I would ask no woman to live with my cousin.”
She wrinkled her brow and said with a faint flush, “Can your purpose be achieved so? Forgive me, I think you cannot have considered, sir! To exclude you from the succession must there not be an heir?”
“No, it is immaterial. The property is most foolishly left. My cousin inherited it from his and my grandfather, through his mother, but her marriage to Lionel Cheviot had so much displeased my grandfather that he was at pains to prevent its falling into his hands or into those of his family. With this aim, he settled it upon his grandson, with the proviso that if Eustace died unmarried it must revert to his younger daughter or her eldest son: myself, in fact.”