"I'm getting on very well," was the somewhat laconic reply.
"Maria told me that you wished to see me. What can I do for you?" Clifford asked, but instinctively scenting something unusual in the atmosphere.
"Sit down," briefly commanded the squire and pointing at a chair opposite him. Clifford obeyed, smiling indulgently at the peremptory tone.
"I've got a story to tell you," began the squire plunging at once into the disagreeable task before him, "and I expect it may surprise you a bit in some ways. My father died when I was a baby. He was a rich man, owning the place which has always been my home, besides considerable other property. He made a will before he died giving everything he possessed to my mother, and leaving her free to do with it just what she chose. Two years afterward she married a second time—a man with no means, a bookworm and would-be literary man, who sometimes earned a little by his pen, though for the most part he was a failure from a pecuniary point of view.
"Less than a year later there came another boy into the family—my half-brother—and at the end of another twelve months my mother was again a widow. From that time she lived only to rear and educate her children, who grew up together, nominally as brothers, but secretly antagonistic to each other from their earliest youth. From my boyhood I was thrifty and ambitious; all my interest and my pride were centered in my home, and I was always planning and working to improve it and make it yield a handsome income. My brother, on the contrary, would not work; he was fond of books, like his father, and, more than all, of a rollicking good time.
"He had no interest in the farm or in anything that pertained to the ways and means of living, and, as he grew toward manhood, he became wild and unmanageable, giving our mother many a heartache because of his reckless habits and extravagance. He always managed to get the lion's share of everything, and, although I know my mother did not mean to be unfair to me, she favored him in many ways, and denied herself almost every luxury to keep his pockets well filled. We both went to college, but when I was through I settled down to manage the estate and make the most out of it and what other property my mother owned. When Bill finished his education he insisted that he must have a trip to Europe. He had his way, and spent a pile of money—more than he had any right to—while I trudged on at home and bore all the burdens. About six months after he went away I became attracted to a—a handsome girl in New Haven. Her name was Isabelle Abbot."
"My mother!" exclaimed Cliff with a sudden start and thrill of dismay, while he grew first crimson, then white.
"Yes, your mother," sharply repeated the squire, "and, as I said, she lived in New Haven, her father doing a good business there in gents' furnishing goods. She returned—or appeared to return—my regard for her, and we shortly became engaged and planned to be married the next fall, as soon as the harvesting was over. In June my brother returned from Europe—the same rollicking, pleasure-loving, indolent fellow he had always been. My mother urged him to settle down to some business or profession, but he kept putting her off, telling her that when he found something that suited him he'd dip in, as he expressed it; but he didn't find what he wanted and continued to live his lazy life, but spending money just as freely as ever. It was a bitter day for me when I introduced him to the girl I expected to marry. He expressed a great deal of admiration for her, called me a 'lucky dog' and said he should 'be very fond of his pretty sister-in-law.'"
The bitterness in Squire Talford's tones as he repeated these sayings of his brother plainly betrayed that his heart was still very sore from these painful experiences of the past.
"Well, it is the old story of treachery, and confidence betrayed," he resumed after a short pause. "He began to visit Belle on the sly, and wormed himself into her affections, and I, while I could see that she was not quite the same as she was before he came home, never dreamed of what was going on between them, until one day—just a month before the day set for our wedding—they both disappeared, leaving only this to tell what had occurred."