Birds of Prey

by M. E. Braddon

I would fain have asked Mr. Mercer to let me see this last letter written by Susan Meynell; but what excuse could I devise for so doing? I was completely fettered by my promise to George Sheldon, and could offer no reasonable pretence for my curiosity.

There was one point which I was bound to push home in the interests of my Sheldon, or, shall I not rather say, of my Charlotte? That all-important point was the question of marriage or no marriage. "You feel quite clear as to the fact that Montagu Kingdon never did marry this young woman?" I said.

"Well, yes," replied uncle Joe; "that was proved beyond doubt, I'm sorry to say. Mr. Kingdon never could have dared to come back here with his West-Indian wife in poor Susan Meynell's lifetime if he had really married her."

"And how about the lady he was said to have married in Spain?"

"I can't say anything about that. It may have been only a scandal, or, if there was a marriage, it may have been illegal. The Kingdons were Protestants, and the Spaniards are all papists, I suppose. A marriage between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic wouldn't be binding."

"Not upon such a man as this Kingdon."

It seems more than probable that the opinion arrived at by this poor soul's friends must be correct, and that Montagu Kingdon was a scoundrel. But how about Susan Meynell's after-life?—the fourteen years in which she was lost sight of? May she not have married some one else than Mr. Kingdon? and may she not have left heirs who will arise in the future to dispute my darling's claim?

Is it a good thing to have a great inheritance? The day has been when such a question as that could not by any possibility have shaped itself in my mind. Ah! what is this subtle power called love, which worketh such wondrous changes in the human heart? Surely the miracle of the cleansed leper is in some manner typical of this transformation. The emanation of divine purity encircled the leper with its supernal warmth, and the scales fell away beneath that mysterious influence. And so from the pure heart of a woman issues a celestial fire which burns the plague-spot out of the sinner's breast. Ah, how I languish to be at my darling's feet, thanking her for the cure she has wrought!

I have given my Sheldon the story of Susan Meynell's life, as I had it from uncle Joseph. He agrees with me as to the importance of Susan's last letter, but even that astute creature does not see a way to getting the document in his hands without letting Mr. Mercer more or less into our secret.

"I might tell this man Mercer some story about a little bit of money coming to his niece, and get at Susan Meynell's letter that way," he said; "but whatever I told him would be sure to get round to Philip somehow or other, and I don't want to put him on the scent."