‘Mrs. Trevanard must have changed very much at the last if she expressed any interest in the fate of her grandchild,’ returned Matthew, forgetting that he had refused to make any admission. ‘When she gave the child to me and my wife, she resigned all concern in its future: it was to fare as we fared, to sink or swim with us.’
‘In that wretched hour she thought the child nameless and fatherless. I did my best to persuade her that she had been too hasty in her conclusion. It shall be my business to prove Justina’s legitimacy.’
‘That is to say, you mean to take my daughter away from me,’ exclaimed the comedian, wrathfully. ‘Little did I know what a snake in the grass I had been cherishing, warming the adder in my bosom, sheltering the scorpion on my domestic hearth. This is what your kettle-drums, and snug little dinners, and port and filberts, are to end in. You would rob a poor old man of the staff and comfort of his declining years: six pounds a week, and a certainty of a rise to ten if the next part she plays is a success.’
‘You are hasty, Mr. Elgood, and unjust. Believe me, if it were a question of my own happiness, I would leave the dear girl you have brought up, Justina Elgood, till I had the Archbishop of Canterbury’s permission to give her my own name. But, having promised to perform a certain duty, I should be a scoundrel if I left it undone. What if I tell you that I have reason to believe Justina entitled to a large estate, an estate of six or seven thousand a year?’
Mr. Elgood sank back in his chair aghast. He had drunk a good many glasses of wine in the course of that comfortable little dinner, and there was some slight haziness in his brain. Six thousand a year, six pounds a week. Six pounds a week, six thousand a year—over a hundred pounds a week. There was a wide margin for spending in the difference between the lesser and greater sum. But of the six pounds a week, while Justina supposed herself his daughter, he was certain. Would she share her annual six thousand as freely when she knew that he had no claim upon her filial piety?
He pondered the question for a few moments, and then answered it in the affirmative. Generous, good, loving, she had ever been. If good fortune befell her she would not grudge the old man his share of the sunshine. He had not been a bad father to her, he told himself, take him for all in all—not over-patient, or considerate, perhaps, in those early days, before he had discovered any dramatic talent in her; a little prone to think of his own comfort before hers; but upon the whole, as fathers go, not a bad kind of parent. And he felt very sure she would stand by him. Yes, he felt sure of Justina. But he must be on his guard against this scheming fellow, Clissold, who had contrived to get hold of a secret that had been kept for nineteen years, and doubtless meant to work it for his own advantage. It would be Matthew Elgood’s duty to countermarch him here.
‘So, Mr. Clissold,’ he began, after about five minutes’ reverie, ‘you are a pretty deep fellow, you are, in spite of your easy, open-handed, open-hearted, free-spoken ways. You think you can establish my Justina’s claim to a fine fortune, do you? And I suppose, when the claim is established, and the girl I have brought up from babyhood, and toiled for and struggled for many a long year, comes into her six thousand per annum, you’ll expect to get her for your wife, with the six or seven thousand at her back. Rather a good stroke of business for you!’
‘I expect nothing,’ answered Maurice, gravely. ‘I love Justina with all my heart, as truly as ever an honest man loved a fair and noble woman; but I have refrained from any expression of my heart’s desire, lest I should bind her by a promise while her position is thus uncertain. Let her win the station to which I believe she is entitled; and if, when it is won, she cares to reward my honest affection, I will take her and be proud of her; but not one whit prouder than I should be to take her for my wife to-morrow, knowing her to be your daughter.’
‘Spoken like a man and a gentleman,’ exclaimed the comedian. ‘Come, Mr. Clissold, I couldn’t think badly of you if I tried. I’ll trust you; and it shall be no fault of mine if Justina is not yours, rich or poor. She’s worthy of you, and you’re worthy of her, and I believe she has a sneaking kindness for you.’
Maurice smiled, happy in a conviction which needed no support from Matthew Elgood’s opinion. That little look of Justina’s yesterday—that tender look of greeting—had been worth volumes of protestation. He knew himself beloved.