“I’ve sent for ye, as in the place of your father’s daughter, ye must know of the changes that come to us, with the chances of Life and the sair ways o’ the world.” He was nervously fumbling with a selection of the papers and he paused and coughed ominously. “There has come to us news which has posted my son Douglas hastily back to India, to do your father’s last bidding.”
Nadine Johnstone’s trembling hand clutched Justine Delande’s still rounded arm.
“Her father the double of this grim ogre?” There was horror in her conjecture, but no pang of affection at the easily divined disclosure. “The news came to us suddenly, yesterday, and Douglas and I are left now to screen ye from the robbers and cormorants of the world! Ye’re one of the richest women in Britain now—Hugh Fraser’s daughter—for yere guid father is no more! A sudden death—a sudden death! and his will leaves you to me as a legal charge, for yere body and yere estate, till ye come o’ the legal age. T’hafs the next three years!”
With a single glance of stern deprecation, Andrew Fraser saw the girl totter and her head fall upon the bosom of the woman who had “sorrowed of her sorrows” in all the years of the lonely colorless infancy, childhood, and budding womanhood! The old bookworm clung to the papers as if that “documentary evidence” was an absolute guaranty, and he held it ready to proffer in support of his theorem. His toughened heart-strings were silent at natural affection’s touch, and only twanged to the never-dying greed for gold—useless gold!
In an unmoved wonder, the senile scholar listened to the broken sobs of the child of Valerie Delavigne. He was astounded at her financial carelessness, when she moaned:
“Let me go away! Let me go!” and then she cried, “What care I for all this money—this useless wealth. He is gone! I am now alone in the world! And—and, now I never will know the story of the past!” There was a stony gleam on the old Scotchman’s face as the girl sobbed, “Mother! Mother! Lost to me forever, now.” The cunning old Scotchman’s face darkened at the mention of that long-forbidden name. The woman who had deserted the rich nabob.
With uneasy, tottering steps the old scholar paced the room, watching the two women in a grim silence, until Justine Delande, with a woman’s questioning eyes, pointed to the rooms above.
“Before ye go, and I’ll now give ye these whole papers and documents, I would say that my dead brother Hugh has here in his will laid out yere whole life for the three years of the minority. He has put on me the thankless labor and care of watching over yere worldly gear, and of keeping ye safely to the lines of prudence and of a just economy. And my duty to my dead brother, I will do just as his own words and hand and seal lay it down! To-morrow I will have much to say to you. If ye will come back to me here, Madame Delande, when my ward goes to her own room, I’ll see ye at once on a brief matter o’ business. And now I’ll wait till ye take her away!” It was a half hour before Justine Delande descended to the rooms where the old egoist chafed at the loss of time stolen from the maundering researches on Thibet and the Ten Tribes.
“Woman! woman! I sent up for ye twice!” he barked, as the half-defiant Swiss governess at length joined him.
“I know my duty to my dear child, Nadine!” said the stout-hearted governess, with a crimsoning cheek. The old man opened a check-book, and sternly said: