“Of your uncle. No! Perhaps not! But your cousin is another matter. Let us suppose that he knows of Sir Joseph’s losses. We know he is not scrupulous. Knowing of your marriage to Dick Bracknell, he paid you attention. He asked you to marry him. He even stooped to threats, as you told me. Why? Because he wanted to be able to control your fortune, to keep the money, some of which was badly needed. You may shake your head, Joy, but that is at least a possibility; and that is why I suggest that it is possible that Adrian Rayner may be desirous of assuring himself of your arrival here. You are beginning to know him; do you think that after his attempt to lure you into a bigamous marriage, and after his threats, that he will be at all chary of using any means that circumstances may offer of putting him in possession of your fortune? I do not! And he has been drinking, if what George says is true; and drink makes a tempted man dangerous. You must be careful, Joy, even diplomatic if necessary.”
“I shall order him to leave North Star the moment we arrive there!” answered Joy stubbornly. “If there is a shadow of truth in your surmises, there is all the more reason why I should do so.”
“You will do as you please, Joy,” replied her foster-sister, breaking into a smile, “and at any rate we have the big battalions on our side. With the drivers and George, and George’s son, Jim, we shall be able to enforce your will.”
“And I shall do so,” answered Joy. “Here I am strong enough to disregard his threats.”
As it happened, the first person they encountered when they left the river trail and swung into the clearing which led to the Lodge, was Adrian Rayner. He was walking towards the river, with a rifle in the crook of his arm, and as he saw them swinging towards him, he halted suddenly, and remained quite still, until Joy reached him. The look on his face betrayed his surprise, and to Joy it was clear that he had not expected to encounter her before his departure from the lodge. He stood there a little nonplussed and it was Joy who spoke first.
“You have not wasted time, Cousin Adrian,” she said, and there was an unmistakable edge to her tones.
“No,” he answered with an awkward laugh. “I promised you I would find that man who was in the wood when you shot your hus——”
“No!” she interrupted sharply, “not when I did, but when you shot my husband!”
There was accusation in her eyes, her voice, and Rayner visibly quailed before it. Then he cried—
“What confounded nonsense is this?”