“That I can’t tell. I never heard the result. About that time I left England myself, and have been abroad ever since.”
“Does it not occur to you,” inquired my friend, “that this Henry Harding of the Times advertisement, and the gentleman who has been entertaining you, may be one and the same man?”
“It is quite possible—indeed, it seems probable. This states that Henry Harding was last heard of at Rome. Now the family into which this gentleman has married came from Rome. That much they told me. He may be the same. He may have answered the advertisement too, and got the something to his advantage, whatever it was; though I am under the impression it was not much. It was generally known that the bulk of General Harding’s property was willed to his eldest son Nigel; and that Henry, the youngest, was left a bare thousand pounds. If my late host be he, in all likelihood he has had the money before now. Might it not have been with it he has so comfortably established himself?”
“No; I can answer for that,” said my friend. “He was settled here long before the date of this advertisement, and has never been out of the country since—certainly never so far as England.”
“It would not be necessary for him to go to England to obtain the legacy of a thousand pounds. All that might have been transacted by letter of attorney.”
“True, but I have good reason to know that he is only a tenant of the estancia you found him in. His Italian father-in-law is the real owner of both properties; and this was the state of affairs from the first—long before the advertisement could have appeared. In my opinion, he has never seen it; and if he be the individual referred to, it might be worth his while to know of it. As I’ve said, I had thoughts of riding over and asking him myself. Although we’ve had very little intercourse, I’ve heard a very good account of him—though not as a very successful sheep-keeper. He’s too fond of hunting for that; and I fancy he hasn’t added much to his wife’s dowry or his father-in-law’s fortune. Indeed, I’ve heard say that he is himself a little sore about this; and if there should be a legacy for him, still unlifted, it might be very welcome and very convenient to him. A thousand pounds isn’t much in London, but it would go a long way out upon the pampas here.”
“True,” I replied mechanically, absorbed in reflecting whether the rejected lover of Miss Belle Mainwaring was the man whom I had met—now married to a wife worth ten thousand of her sort.
“I’ll tell you what you can do,” said my friend; “you say they’ve invited you to stop there on your way back to Rosario?”
“I am under a promise to do so.”
“Lucky fellow! to have made such a brace of beautiful acquaintances; for the Argentine lady is not thought so far behind her Italian sister-in-law. All by the stumbling of a horse, too! By Jove, I’d risk the breaking of my neck every day in the year for such a chance! You were always fortunate in that sort of thing.”