Sitting down by her father, she opened the musty old volume and read aloud certain passages which, written in fierce heat at the time, disclosed a painful family scene. Angry words, bitter recriminations, the sense of injustice on one side, the thirst for revenge on the other, were faithfully portrayed by the dead-and-gone chronicler.
The squire’s lips moved in unspoken accompaniment to the words which his daughter read aloud, and Miss Katharine bent eagerly forward in order not to lose a syllable.
“I am dying, and there is no male heir to Avonsyde,” said the squire at last. “Griselda and Katharine, I wish to state here distinctly that my great-great-grandfather made a mistake when he turned the boy Rupert from the old place. Valentine should have refused to inherit; it is doubtless because of Valentine’s weakness and his father’s spirit of revenge that I die to-day without male issue to inherit Avonsyde.”
“Heaping recriminations on the dead won’t help matters now,” said Miss Griselda in a sententious voice. As she spoke she closed the diary, clasped it and locked it, and Miss Katharine, starting to her feet, said:
“There are the children in London, your grandchildren, father, and our nearest of kin.”
The squire favored his younger daughter with a withering look, and even Miss Griselda started at what were very bold words.
“Those children,” said the squire—“girls, both of them, sickly, weakly, with Valentine’s miserable pink-and-white delicacy and their low born mother’s vulgarity; I said I would never see them, and I surely do not wish to hear about them now. Griselda, there is now one plain and manifest duty before you—I lay it as my dying charge on you and Katharine. I leave the search which you are to institute as your mission in life. While you both live Avonsyde is yours, but you must search the world over if necessary for Rupert Lovel’s descendants; and when you discover them you are to elect a bonny stalwart boy of the house as your heir. No matter whether he is eldest or youngest, whether he is in a high position or a low position in the social scale, provided he is a lineal descendant of the Rupert Lovel who was disinherited in 1684, and provided also he is strong and upright and well-featured, with muscle and backbone and manliness in him, you are to appoint him your heir, and you are to bequeath to him the old house, and the old lands, and all the money you can save by simple and abstemious living. I have written it down in my will, and you are tied firmly, both of you, and cannot depart from my instructions; but I wished to talk over matters with you, for Katharine there is slow to take in a thing, and you, Grizel, are prejudiced and rancorous in your temper, and I wish you both clearly to understand that the law binds you to search for my heir, and this, if you want to inherit a shilling from me during your lifetime, you must do. Remember, however, and bear ever strongly in mind, that if, when you find the family, the elder son is weakly and the younger son is strong, it is to the sturdy boy that the property is to go; and hark you yet again, Griselda and Katharine, that the property is not to go to the father if he is alive, but to the young boy, and the boy is to be educated to take up his rightful position. A strong lad, a manly and stalwart lad, mind you; for Avonsyde has almost ceased to exist, owing to sickly and effeminate heirs, since the time when my great-great-grandfather quarreled with his son, Rupert Lovel, and gave the old place to that weakly stripling Valentine. I am a descendant of Valentine myself, but, ’pon my word, I rue the day.”
“Your directions shall be obeyed to the letter,” said Miss Griselda; but Miss Katharine interrupted her.
“And we—we have only a life-interest in the property, father?” she inquired in a quavering voice.
The old squire looked up into his younger daughter’s face and laughed.