“Who said I had a husband, or that to find him or lose him was anything to me?” Then, with a strong effort, she reseated herself in her chair. “That was a bold guess,” she said, “Mr. Templar, not to say a little insulting, don’t you think, to a respectable single lady that has never had a finger lifted upon her? I am of a well-known race enough. I have never concealed myself. There are plenty of people in Scotland who will give you full details of me and all my ways. It is not like a lawyer—a cautious man, bound by his profession to be careful—to make such a strange attempt upon me.”
“I make no attempt. I only ask a question, and one surely most justifiable. You did not sign a name to which you had no right, on so important a document as a will; therefore you are Mrs. Gordon Grant, and a person to whom for many years I have had a statement to make.”
She looked at him again with a dumb rigidity of aspect, but said not a word.
“The communication I had to make to you,” he said, “was of a death—not one, so far as I know, that could bring you any advantage, or harm either, I suppose. I may say that it took place years ago. I have no reason, either, to suppose that it would be the cause of any deep sorrow.”
“Sorrow?” she said, but her lips were dry, and could articulate no more.
“I have nothing to do with your reasons for having kept your marriage so profound a secret,” he said. “The result has naturally been the long delay of a piece of information which perhaps would have been welcome to you. Mrs. Grant, your husband, George Gordon Grant, died nearly twenty years ago.”
“Twenty years ago!” she cried, with a start, “twenty years?” Then she raised her voice suddenly and cried, “Gilchrist!” She was very pale, and her excitement great, her eyes gleaming, her nerves quivering. She paid no attention to the little lawyer, who on his side observed her so closely. “Gilchrist,” she said, when the maid came in hurriedly from the inner room in which she had been, “we have often wondered why there was no sign of him when I came into my fortune. The reason is he was dead before my uncle died.”
“Dead?” said Gilchrist, and put up at once her apron to her eyes, “dead? Oh, mem, that bonnie young man!”
“Yes,” said Miss Bethune. She rose up and began to move about the room in great excitement. “Yes, he would still be a bonnie young man then—oh, a bonnie young man, as his son is now. I wondered how it was he made no sign. Before, it was natural: but when my uncle was dead—when I had come into my fortune! That explains it—that explains it all. He was dead before the day he had reckoned on came.”
“Oh, dinna say that, now!” cried Gilchrist. “How can we tell if it was the day he had reckoned on? Why might it no’ be your comfort he was aye thinking of—that you might lose nothing, that your uncle might keep his faith in you, that your fortune might be safe?”