“Thank you for that, Laurence,” he said, “a hundred thanks. But I keep to what I said. Whatever your personal prejudices may have been, you did not act upon them. Your conduct was based entirely upon regard, unselfish regard for my welfare, and this Alys felt instinctively and set her wits to work to puzzle it out. But what has first to be considered is this—the statement on that paper is Alys’s own voluntary declaration—”
“Did she write it of her own accord?”
“She first said it to me, in stronger and plainer words even than those she wrote; and when I asked her if she would put it on paper, she did so in an instant—with the greatest eagerness and readiness. Now, Laurence, what is now my position? Supposing I wished to do such a thing, could I ask Alys to marry me after what she has said—it would be a perfect farce and mockery.”
“It certainly would,” said Mr Cheviott. “I’ll tell you what we must do, Arthur. We must go up to town and lay the present state of the case before old Maudsley, and see what he says. He is as anxious as any of us to get the thing settled, and he must see that it would be perfect nonsense now to look forward to any possibility of the terms of the will being fulfilled. And I do not see that their non-fulfillment can possibly rest upon you. It is a strong point in your favour that you have done nothing premature in any other direction. No doubt we shall have to go to law about it—carry it before the Court of Chancery, I mean to say—but as all the beneficiaries, you and Alys, or myself as her guardian, are of one mind as to what we wish, I cannot now anticipate much difficulty.”
“But, Laurence,” began Arthur, and then he hesitated. “At all costs,” he went on again, “I must be open with you. I have done what you call something ‘premature’ in another direction. I am as good as—in fact, I am engaged to Lilias Western.”
Mr Cheviott’s brow contracted.
“Since when?” he said, shortly, while a sudden painful misgiving darted through his brain. Had Mary known this?—had she, in a sense, deceived him? True, she was under no sort of bond not to oppose him—rather the other way; from the first she had openly defied him on this point, but still she must be different from what he had believed her, capable of something more like dissimulation and calculation than he liked to associate with that candid brow, those honest eyes, were it the case that she had known this actual state of things all through that time at the Edge farm—so lately even as during their strange drive to Withenden and back. With keen anxiety he awaited his cousin’s reply.
“Since about the time of Alys’s accident I came down here then one day—you did not know—I was so uneasy about Alys—and I met Lilias close to the Edge, and heard from her how Alys was. And then somehow—I felt I could not go on like that, at the worst I could work for her, and I have been learning how to do so, you must allow—somehow we came to an understanding.”
“And her people know, of course—her sister does, any way, I suppose?” said Mr Cheviott, with an unmistakable accent of pain in his voice which made Captain Beverley look up in surprise.
“Her sister—Mary, do you mean? No, indeed she does not. None of them do. There was, indeed, very little to know—simply an understanding, I might almost call it a tacit understanding, between our two selves that we would wait for each other till brighter days came. We have not written to each other or met again. I would do nothing to compromise Lilias till I could openly claim her. I did not, of course, explain my position; had I done so, she would not, as you once said, have agreed to my ruining myself for her sake. All she knows is that I may very probably be a very poor man. And because I could not explain my position, I saw no harm in keeping it all to our two selves for the present. But, you see, I have looked upon it as settled—till to-day I have considered myself virtually disinherited, and I have been working hard at C— to fit myself for an agency or so on at the end of the two years.”