“I hope you will accept my daughter’s invitation,” said Mr. Ford, courteously. “Permit me, Mr. Sharp, to introduce our excellent neighbor, Miss Grey.”
“I am proud to make your acquaintance, Miss Grey,” said the lawyer, bowing profoundly. “Any friend of my esteemed friends, Mr. and Miss Ford, needs no other recommendation in my eyes. May I express the hope that you are well?”
“Quite so, thank you, sir,” said Martha, a little overpowered by the lawyer’s elaborate civility.
She was at length persuaded to make a fourth at Helen’s banquet.
How much it was enjoyed by all present, not one of whom was accustomed to such good fare every day; how proudly and gracefully Helen did the honors of the occasion; how merrily they all laughed at the bungling attempts of Mr. Ford to carve the fowls, and how, finally, he was compelled to call in the lawyer’s assistance; how genial and affable Mr. Sharp was, and how he insisted on proposing the health of Martha Grey, much to that young lady’s modest confusion; how his deference for her father raised him every moment in Helen’s estimation,—all this I must leave to the imagination of the reader, while I prepare in the next chapter to invite him to a different scene.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BELL RINGS.
Two persons who are nearly concerned in the revelation made by Mr. Sharp to Robert Ford, now demand our attention.
First, Mr. Rand, who, upon a sick-bed, worn-out by anxiety and bodily weakness, is fast drifting towards that unseen world, where all that is dark and mysterious here will be disclosed, and we shall know even as we are known. The second, is Lewis Rand, his unworthy nephew, whose whole soul is absorbed by the eager desire to secure to himself his uncle’s large fortune. Why this thirst for gold should so have possessed him, is not so clear. It was not that his habits were extravagant, for such was not the case. He was no voluptuary, at least not in the lowest sense of the word. It was not for the mere love of money that he craved it. He was elevated above the mere miser; but money was valuable to him for the power which it conferred, and the consequence which it gave. Lewis Rand’s ambition had taken this form. He desired to be known everywhere as the possessor of a princely fortune. He wished others to fawn upon him as he had fawned upon his uncle. As his dependence had compelled him to remain in a subordinate position, he wished others to become subordinates to him. Money he must have, somehow. So for years he had labored to establish and strengthen his position as his uncle’s heir. The inheritance which he craved, would make him at once a millionnaire.
As a general who has fortified a city, so as to make it, as he considers, impregnable, and at the last discovers a weak place which endangers the whole, exerts all his energy and all the resources which he can command to counteract the danger, so Lewis had, as we have seen, set in motion certain agencies, through which he hoped to avert the peril which menaced him in his cousin’s presence.
“Have you received no letters in answer to the advertisement, Lewis?” asked Mr. Rand, feebly.