A Bitter Heritage: A Modern Story of Love and Adventure

by John Bloundelle-Burton

"I have a warrant for your arrest and for this man called Sebastian Ritherdon," the sergeant said. "If he is not dead we shall have him."

"Then I pray God he is dead," Madame Carmaux cried, "for if you arrest him you will arrest an innocent man."

In answer to which the sergeant merely shrugged his shoulders, while addressing one of his force he bade him keep close to her.

"Was he in truth her son?" Julian asked, turning to where a moment before Zara had been standing. But once more, as so often she had done in the course of this narrative, the girl had vanished. Vanished, that is, so far as Julian and one or two others observed now, yet being seen by some of those who were standing near the door to creep out hurriedly and then to rush madly down the corridor.

"No," said Madame Carmaux, glaring at him with a glance which, had she had the power, would have slain him where he stood. "Though I often called him so. It is a lie."

"Is it?" said Julian quietly. "It would hardly seem so. Here is a paper which was written in England ere I set out for Honduras by the man whom I thought to be my father, and in which he tells in writing the whole story he told me by word of mouth. I looked for that paper after his death--and--I have found it here--in the pocket of Sebastian's jacket."

Such was indeed the case. When Zara had run into the room where Julian was, and had possessed herself of his jacket with the naval buttons on it--she meaning by its use to more thoroughly deceive the Indians who were to take Sebastian away in his stead--she had left behind her the other jacket which the latter had carried over his arm. And that, in the obscurity of a room lit only by the one candle, Julian should have hastily donned another jacket so like his own, and which he found in the place where he had lain for three nights, was not a surprising thing. But he recognised the exchange directly when, happening to put his hand into the pocket, he discovered the very missing papers which Mr. Ritherdon said he was going to leave behind for Julian's guidance, but which he must undoubtedly have forwarded to his brother, as an explanation--an account--of his sin against him in years gone by.

"Whoever's son he was," said Mr. Spranger, "he was undoubtedly not the son of Charles Ritherdon and his wife, Isobel Leigh. There can be no possibility of that. Who, therefore, can he have been--he who was so like you?" while, even as he gazed into Julian's eyes, there was still upon his face the look of incredulity which had always appeared there whenever he discussed the latter's claim to be the heir of Desolada.

"If she," said Beatrix now, with a glance toward where Madame Carmaux sat, rigid as a statue and almost as lifeless, except for her sparkling, glaring eyes--"if she never had a daughter, but did have a son, why may he not be that son? Some imposture may have been practised upon Mr. Ritherdon."

"It is impossible," her father said. "He knew his own child was lost--his brother's narrative tells that; she could not have palmed off on him another child--her own child--in the place of his."