‘There can be only one of us who is in any danger,’ said the young man.
‘I might say that was enigmatical still: but I will receive it as I am sure it is meant, and I congratulate you upon a very pretty turn of speech. Few young Englishmen deserve that. My Leo I used to think—but he is getting heavy in England, as most young men do.’
To this Lord Will, who was much intent upon the revelations to be made to him, was prepared with no reply; and serious as this old woman’s meaning was, and fatal in intent, she was nevertheless half disappointed that he did not continue a little the badinage with which she would have been pleased to preface what she had to say. She had an eye to serious interest even in desiring to prolong this moment. For no man likes to see his old mother imitating the coquette, and it might have resulted in sending Leo away.
‘I think I heard you say—and you must pardon me for interfering with your family affairs—that there was a question of money involved in your coming here to see after these unknown relations?’
‘Yes,’ said Lord Will, straightening himself up with relief; ‘there is money. My uncle John died the other day, rich, and without a will. There were only two other brothers, my father and my Uncle William. In that case, Uncle William’s heirs would come in for half the estate.’ He stopped with a little embarrassment. ‘And my father was of opinion—my mother thought—— It seemed a little hard perhaps that people we know nothing of—and then, for his rank, and with all he has to keep up, my father is a poor man.’
‘So you came to see——?’
Whatever her own motives might be, Mrs. Swinford had no thought of letting off a culprit of another kind. The young man grew red under her searching eye. ‘You thought it a pity,’ she went on, ‘that the money you could spend so much better should be wasted upon a couple of insignificant women—who perhaps had never heard, never knew that they had any claim to it, so would have been none the worse?’
‘You take me up too sharply,’ answered Lord Will. ‘I don’t think I meant anything like that. I meant that it was best to see something of them—to know something. My father has given Lady William an allowance all along. I don’t know that he was compelled to do it. He has not abandoned his brother’s widow. We thought that perhaps——’
‘I will not ask what you find so much difficulty in putting into words. What would your father say to any one who gave him a chance of proving—that Emily Plowden was not William Pakenham’s widow at all?’
She had lowered her voice, but yet spoke with such a keenness of meaning that she was heard further than she intended. Leo came striding out of the dark where he was, calling out in a voice of indignation, ‘Mother!’ She turned to him and waved her hand quickly, threateningly, without any of the former consciousness of a gracious pose.