Nevitt took his cue at once, like a clever hand that he was, and followed it up remorselessly. “Well, I’m glad to hear that anyhow,” he answered, assuming a careless air of utter unconcern, “for your sake as well as for his, Miss Gildersleeve; for Granville Kelmscott, as I happen to know in the course of business, is a ruined man—a ruined man this moment. He isn’t, and never was, the heir of Tilgate. And I’m sure it was very honourable of him, the minute he found he was a penniless beggar, to release you from such an unequal engagement.”
He had played his card well. He had delivered his shot neatly. Gwendoline, though anxious to withdraw from his hateful presence, couldn’t help but stay and learn more about this terrible hint of his. A light broke in upon her even as the fellow spoke. Was it this, then, that had made Granville talk so strangely to her that morning by the dell in the Woodlands? Was it this which, as he told her, rendered their marriage impossible? Why, if THAT were all—Gwendoline drew a deep breath and clasped her hands together in a sudden access of mingled hope and despair. “Oh, what do you mean, Mr. Nevitt,” she cried eagerly. “What can Granville have done? Don’t keep me in suspense! Do tell me what you mean by it.”
Montague Nevitt, still seated, looked up at her with a smile of quiet satisfaction. He played with her for a moment as a cat plays with a mouse. She was such a beautiful creature, so tall and fair and graceful, and she was so awfully afraid, and he was so awfully fond of her, that he loved to torture her thus and hold her dangling in his power. “No, Gwendoline,” he said slowly, drawing his words out by driblets, so as to prolong her suspense, “I oughtn’t to have mentioned it at all. It’s a professional secret. I retract what I said. Forget that I said it. Excuse me on the ground of my natural reluctance to see a woman I still love so deeply and so purely—whatever she may happen to think of ME—throw herself away on a man without a name or a penny. However, as Kelmscott seems to have done the honourable thing of his own accord, and given you up the minute he knew he couldn’t keep you in the way you’ve been accustomed to—why, there’s no need, of course, of any warning from me. I’ll say no more on the subject.”
His studied air of mystery piqued and drew on his victim. Gwendoline knew in her own heart she ought to go at once; her own dignity demanded it, and she should consult her dignity. But still, she couldn’t help longing to know what Nevitt’s half-hints and innuendoes might mean. After all, she was a woman! “Oh, do tell me,” she cried, clasping her hands in suspense once more; “what have you heard about Mr. Kelmscott? I’m not engaged to him; I don’t want to know for that, but—” she broke down, blushing crimson, and Montague Nevitt, gazing fixedly at her delicate peach-like cheek, remarked to himself how extremely well that blush became her.
“No, but remember,” he said in a very grave voice, in his favourite impersonation of the man of honour, “whatever I tell you—if I give way at all and tell you anything—you must hear in confidence, and must repeat to nobody. If you do repeat it, you’ll get me into very serious trouble. And not only so, but as nobody knows it except myself, you’ll as good as proclaim to all the world that you heard it from ME. If I tell you what I know, will you promise me this—not to breathe a syllable of what I say to anybody?”
Gwendoline, glancing down, and thoroughly ashamed of herself, yet answered in a very low and trembling voice, “I’ll promise, Mr. Nevitt.”
“Then the facts are these,” the man of feeling went on, with an undercurrent of malicious triumph in his musical voice. “Kelmscott is NOT his father’s eldest son; he’s NOT, and never was, the heir of Tilgate. More than that, nobody knows these facts but myself. And I know the true heirs, and I can prove their title. Well, now, Miss Gildersleeve—if it’s to be Miss Gildersleeve still—this is the circumstance that alters the case as regards Granville Kelmscott. I have it in my hands to ruin Kelmscott. And what I’ve taken the trouble to come down and say to you to-day is simply this for your own advantage; beware, at least, how you throw yourself away upon a penniless man, with neither name nor fortune! When you’ve quite got over that dream, you’ll be glad to return to the man you threw overboard for the rich squire’s son. No circumstances have ever altered him. He loved you from the first, and he will always love you.”
Gwendoline looked him back in the face again, as pale as death. “Mr. Nevitt,” she said scornfully, unmoved by his tale, “I do not love you, and I will never love you. You have no right to say such things to me as this. I’m glad you’ve told me, for I now know what Mr. Kelmscott meant. And if he was as poor as a church mouse, I’d marry him to-morrow—I said just now I didn’t mean to marry him. I retract that word. Circumstances alter cases, and what you’ve just told me alters this one. I withdraw what I said. I’ll marry Granville Kelmscott to-morrow if he asks me.”
She looked down at him so proudly, so defiantly, so haughtily, that Montague Nevitt, sitting there with his cynical smile on his thin red lips, flinched and wavered before her. He saw in a moment the game was up. He had played the wrong card; he had mistaken his woman and tried false tactics. It was too late now to retreat. An empty revenge was all that remained to him. “Very well,” he said sullenly, looking her back in the face with a nasty scowl—for indeed he loved that girl and was loath to lose her—“remember your promise, and say nothing to anybody. You’ll find it best so for your own reputation in the end. But mark my words; be sure I won’t spare Granville Kelmscott now. I’ll play my own game. I’ll ruin him ruthlessly. He’s in my power, I tell you, and I’ll crush him under my heel. Well, that’s settled at last. I’m off to Devonshire to-morrow—on the hunt of the records—to the skirts of Dartmoor, to a place in the wilds by the name of Mambury.” He raised his hat, and, curling his lip maliciously, walked away, without even so much as shaking hands with her. He knew it was all up. That game was lost. And, being a man of feeling, he regretted it bitterly.
Gwendoline, for her part, hurried home, all aglow with remorse and excitement. When she reached the house, she went straight up in haste to her own bedroom. In spite of her promise, all woman that she was, she couldn’t resist sitting down at once and inditing a hurried note to Granville Kelmscott.