"It matters much, indeed; all would wish to stand well in your estimation—and I more than all, Miss Hampton."
"Well—are not most people worshippers of Mammon?"
"More, I hope, worshippers of beauty."
His smile became a leer, and while irritation gathered in her heart, she said:
"I know nothing of either—I have lived only some eighteen years in the world, Mr. Hampton. But why do you cross-question me?" she added impetuously.
"Pardon me; because to me all your thoughts are of the deepest interest, and I——"
"I do not understand all this," interrupted Clara, with increasing annoyance; "but here is our gate, and I must wish you good morning, Mr. Hampton."
"Good morning." He lifted his hat and turned away, with a baffled and angry emotion in his mind, and an expression in his eyes, that, had Clara seen it, would certainly have startled her; but so far as she was concerned, sorrow, annoyance, and evil were fated to come thick and fast now.
Rookleigh's law agents were meanwhile perfecting the evidences of his own and his brother's claims successively to the title held then by Lord Oakhampton. We have already detailed the angry interview between his lordship and Mr. De Murrer, and the alarm with which it inspired him; and this emotion was renewed when, from that gentleman, acting ostensibly in the interest of the absent Derval, but in reality under the secret pressure of Rookleigh, came a terrifying legal missive, to the effect that the whole chain of evidence was now complete and would shortly be laid before the world!
"There is but one way of compromising with the absent heir," wrote Mr. De Murrer, good-naturedly: "your lordship has no direct heir; Mr. Derval Hampton, and then his brother, are the next in succession; thus, if you do not marry again, the claim may take its course after your demise, if the heirs assent thereto."