“If you please; I am ready to meet him now,” Paul Tressalia said, with a weary sigh.
The lawyer immediately arose and left the room, but returned again almost instantly, accompanied by a tall, handsome stranger, whose peculiarly noble and attractive face at once riveted Paul Tressalia’s eye.
“My lord,” the Hon Archibald Faxon said, in his most gracious manner, “allow me to present to you my client, who is also your relative, and by the name his mother gave him—Earle Wayne!”
CHAPTER XXVI
THE BATTLE WON
In the great library at Wycliffe three strongly contrasted men had met to solve one of life’s most complex problems.
Paul Tressalia, the present master of Wycliffe, was face to face with the grim possibility of being turned out of his estates.
The Hon. Archibald Faxon, a famous London lawyer, had entered the library a moment before and introduced to the astounded Paul Tressalia a claimant in the shape of a cousin upon whose name had rested the shadow of shame.
But it was not simply this that had driven the blood from Paul Tressalia’s face. It was the fact that the lawyer had introduced his client as “Earle Wayne.”
“Earle Wayne!” repeated Paul Tressalia, in a startled tone, a sharp, sudden pain running throughout his frame at the name as he remembered an interview with pretty Editha Dalton, and instantly knew that his rival for her love, and the claimant for his supposed inheritance, were one and the same person.
Then quickly recovering himself, he greeted his kinsman with the courtesy that always characterized him.