Nadine Johnstone rose and seized both of Justine’s hands: “Promise me now, by my dead mother’s grave, that you will never tell that man anything of our secret compact of to-day! I fear him! I disliked him from the first! He had strange dealings with the dead.” The girl’s face was stern. “If I am approached by him in any way, I will cease every communication with you forever! I will have no aid of Alan Hawke.”
And when the parting hour came, Justine Delande was amazed at the cold dignity with which Nadine Johnstone faced the grim old uncle. It was only at the gate of the “Banker’s Folly,” that the heiress for the last time kissed her friend in adieu. “Fear not for me. I have learned the lesson of Life. Remember!” she whispered. “Keep the faith! Guard my trusts!” and then, Justine sobbed: “Loyal a la mort!”
The evening shades were darkening the sculptured shores of Rozel Bay, where clumsy luggers lay far below, high and dry on the beach, behind the great masonry pier. Skiffs and fishing-boats lined the shores, and the soft breeze moved the foliage of the luxuriant garden. The white stars were peeping out and twinkling in the gray and lonely sea, as Nadine shivered and walked firmly back to the portico, where the old recluse awaited her.
With a stiff motion of perfunctory courtesy, he motioned the heiress into the frosty-looking drawing-room, now lit up with spectral gleams of wax candles. For he would treat his ward with a frozen dignity.
Andrew Fraser coughed in a hollow warning and wasted no words in his first bulletin of “General Orders.” “I have here a certified copy of your late father’s will,” he said, “for your perusal. You will see all the conditions of life which he has wisely laid down for you. I have telegraphed on to London for his solicitor to send a representative here, and the original testament will be duly filed at Doctors’ Commons, at once. I shall at once provide you with suitable women attendants. I have already engaged a proper housekeeper, to whom you can state all your wishes. With regard to money matters and your correspondence, you must consult me! For the present, you will readily see that I deem it imprudent for you to leave these spacious and splendid grounds! But, ye’ll find ways to busy yourself. Women always do!”
The old pedant marveled at the young woman’s composure, for she simply bowed and awaited a termination of the interview. Slightly disconcerted, he abruptly demanded: “Have you anything to say?”
“Only this, Andrew Fraser,” coldly replied the heiress. “Your sending away the only woman whom I know in the world has marked you as a tyrant and a jailer.” Her spirit was as unyielding as his own, and he winced.
“Ye’ll find I had your father’s warrant. I’ll go on to the end and obey him! There are to be no old associations kept up, and when ye come to your own ye can do all ye will! I’ll go my way in my duty and do it as it seems right!” When he finished he was alone, for the daughter of Valerie Delavigne had passed him with a glance of unutterable contempt.
There was fire in the eye of the rebellious girl, and the elastic firmness of youth in her tread, but above stairs, in her own lonely rooms, her courage faded away quickly. But she wrapped her sorrows in her own proud young heart and turned her eyes to the far East. “Will he come?” she murmured.
When the clumsy island serving girl had trimmed the fire and drawn the heavy curtains, Nadine Johnstone locked her doors. She sat spellbound, with a wildly beating heart, until she had read the last of the sixteen provisions of her father’s vindictive will. Though the whole fortune was left absolutely to her, with the exception of twenty-five thousand pounds each to Andrew Fraser and his son, she was tied up by restrictions so infamously brutal, that her three years of minority stretched out before her as a death in life. Five hundred pounds a year of pin money were allowed to her until her majority, “to be expended with the approval of her guardian.”