Irene laughed softly, and her glance wandered beyond the busy camp to the distant hills.
"I have known more unlikely events to happen," she said.
"I thought so. I recognized the symptoms. Well, I want to make a sort of bargain with you. If you help me, I can help you, and, to show that I can give effect to my words, I shall tell you exactly what form my help will take before I state the nature of the assistance I ask from you, so that you may be at perfect liberty to give or withhold it as you choose."
"This is a rather one-sided contract, is it not?"
"No. I fancy it will be equitable. I have not lived in close intimacy with you during so many weeks without arriving at a fair estimate of your character. You are one of the fortunate people, Irene, who find it more blessed to give than to receive. At any rate I am satisfied to settle matters that way. And to come to the point, while you may experience grave difficulty in obtaining your grandfather's consent to your marriage with a penniless young gentleman of striking physique but no profession—Mr. Royson being even a second mate on sufferance, so to speak—the aspect of your affairs changes materially when your suitor becomes Sir Richard Royson, Baronet, with a fine estate and a rent-roll of five thousand pounds a year."
"How can you possibly know that?" gasped Irene, spilling half her tea in sheer excitement.
"It is more than possible—It is true. I happen to be aware of the facts. That thrice fortunate young man came into our lives at a moment when, by the merest chance, I was able to acquire some knowledge of his family history. His uncle, the twenty-sixth baronet, I believe, sustained an accident in childhood which unhappily made him a cripple and a hunchback. He grew up a misanthrope. He hated his only brother because he was tall and strong as befitted one of the race, and his hatred became a mania when Captain Henry Royson married a young lady on whom the dwarf baronet had set his mind. There never was the least reason to believe that she would have wed Sir Richard, but that did not prevent him from pursuing her with a spite and vindictiveness that earned him very bad repute in Westmoreland. His brother and nephew were, however, his heirs, though the estate was a poor one, but, when minerals were discovered on the property, he persuaded Captain Royson to agree that the entail should be broken, as certain business developments could then be carried out more effectively. This was a reasonable thing in itself, but, unhappily, the younger brother was killed in the hunting-field, and some legal kink in the affair enabled the baronet to reduce the widow and her son to actual poverty. Young Royson made a gallant attempt to support his mother, but she died nearly five years ago. Naturally, there was a mortal feud between him and his uncle. Sir Richard's constant aim has been to crush his nephew. He arranged matters so that the bare title alone would pass to the heir at his death. Yet, on the very day that young Royson stopped your frightened horses in Buckingham Palace Road, the baronet slipped on the oak floor of the picture gallery in Orme Castle—that is the name of their place in the North—and injured his spine. The nearness of death seems to have frightened him into an act of retribution. He made a new will, constituting your Richard his heir, and he died the day before our caravan left Pajura."
A certain cold disdain had crept into Irene's face as she listened. Mrs. Haxton was well aware of the change in the girl's manner, but she did not interrupt the thread of her story, nor seek to alter its significance.
"Mr. Royson knows nothing of these later events that are so vitally important to him?" she asked, when the other woman's quiet narration ceased its even flow.
"No."