"He made his will only a few weeks previous, leaving his interest in his house to his daughter, if she ever came back, and made me administrator of the estate—that was another grip for me. You see, I held the mortgage, and as I'd never let on about my state of mind regarding that old disappointment, he naturally thought I'd be the best one to manage the business, if I could ever get trace of his daughter. Ha!"
Clifford moved uneasily in his chair, for the vindictiveness in his companion's voice rasped almost beyond endurance. The squire observed it, and a wintry smile flitted over his face.
"That strikes you as rather vicious, doesn't it?" he said. "But I told you that that wrong made a devil of me. Well, Mr. Abbot hadn't been gone two months when his daughter came home, bringing her four-weeks'-old baby—you—with her."
"But, my father—where was he?" questioned Clifford in an eager tone.
"That was more than any one could tell; he had deserted his wife nearly a year previous, and she never saw or heard from him afterward. Here is the letter he wrote her, informing her of his intention. I found it among her papers after she died, and, as it struck me as being something rather unique, I have kept it as a curiosity and with the thought that it might prove useful to me at some time or other. It may, perhaps, serve to give you an inkling regarding his character."
He lifted a letter from the table beside him and handed it to Clifford with a grim smile on his face.
This is what the young man read;
"I'm off. There is no use in longer trying to conceal the fact that I am tired of the continual grind of the last two years. It was a great mistake that we ever married, and I may as well confess what you have already surmised, that I never really loved you. Why did I marry you, then? Well, you know that I never could endure to be balked in anything, and as I had made up my mind to cut a certain person out, I was bound to carry my point. You know who I mean, and that he and I were always at cross-purposes. The best thing you can do will be to go back to your own people—tell whatever story you choose about me. I shall never take the trouble to refute it, neither will I ever annoy you in any way. Get a divorce if you want one. I will not oppose it; as I said before, I am tired of the infernal grind and bound to get out of it. I'll go my way, and you may go yours; but don't attempt to find or follow me, for I won't be hampered by any responsibilities in the future."
"Wretch!" he muttered between his tightly locked teeth. "And have you never heard anything of him since?"
"Wait; let me tell my story in my own way and you will know all there is to know when I am through," the squire replied, and then resumed: "I told you that Belle Abbott came home with her baby, to find her father and mother both gone and with no resources for herself except the interest in the house where her parents had died. But she was thankful for even a roof to cover her, and, being a woman of considerable energy and strength of character, she began to look about for something to do to support herself and her child, and—to pay the interest on the mortgage, which, even then, was overdue."