“I read over the first page twice before I fully grasped its purport.
“‘My Dear Sir,—We regret deeply the unpleasant nature of the communication which we are reluctantly compelled to make. We cannot sufficiently express our surprise at the apparent carelessness of Messrs. Steadman and Delve, who have been your uncle’s trusted lawyers and agents for fifty years, and in point of fact acted in that capacity for your grandfather, the late Lord Fontenaye, and we apologise, with sincere regrets, for not having verified with greater care the precise nature of Sir Reginald’s last will and testament.
“‘It now appears that the testator made another will a year after the one by which you were to benefit so largely. That other will has been found in a secret drawer, and is now in the possession of Messrs. Steadman and Delve. By it all former wills are revoked, and there is a total omission of your name as a beneficiary. With the exception of comparatively trifling annuities and legacies, the whole of the testator’s very large estates, together with the sum of £300,000 invested in the three per cents, is willed to your elder brother, the present Lord Fontenaye.’
“This was a thunderclap; indeed, apart from the natural distaste felt by most men at having been suddenly displaced from a position of wealth and importance, my chief regret arose from the feeling of disappointment which my change from wealth to moderate competence would cause to my beloved Adeline.
“No doubt of her loyalty and good faith troubled me. A legacy from my mother provided a sufficient, if not unusual income, as well as a fair estate, upon which we could live in something more than moderate comfort. Surely no girl would hesitate to declare her willingness to share the fortunes of a man to whom she had plighted her troth, though dissociated from the splendour which surrounded the former position. I lost no time in telegraphing to her father the change in our circumstances, at the same time writing a full explanation and requesting a day’s delay before visiting Oldacres, on account of necessary arrangements. But little time was lost in telegraphing an answer to my communication. ‘Much shocked by your news. Please to await letter. Miss Montresor much overcome.’
“The first news had been disastrous; the second intimation was unpleasant in tone and suggestion. I could not but regard it as showing a disposition to retreat from the engagement. But was this possible—even probable? Could I think my adored one guilty of withdrawing from her solemnly pledged troth-plight, entirely on account of the change in my fortunes from those of a rich man with an historic rent-roll and estates hardly exceeded by those of any English proprietor? Was it then the rents and the three per cents which this angel-seeming creature accepted without reference to the man? It would appear so. My youth and inexperience, how inferior in worldly wisdom had they shown me to be to this calculating worldling in the garb of an angel of light.
“If so, of course it was not fully decided so far. Let the end try the man. I trusted that I should be able to stand up to my fight, heavy and crushing as might be the blow Fate had dealt me. But all light and colour, all sympathy with and savour of pleasure, so-called, died out of my life. My premonition was but too accurate. Following the statement in my legal adviser’s letter, every paper in England had a more or less sensational paragraph to the effect that the announcement of the late Sir Reginald Lutterworth’s testamentary disposition was premature and incorrect. The bulk of that gentleman’s property, his great estates, and large deposits in the funds, goes to Lord Fontenaye, the head of the house.
“Soon after this, through some channels of intelligence, came a harmless looking paragraph in the personal column of the Court Circular:—‘We are authorised to contradict the report of the engagement of Miss Adeline Montresor to the Honourable Valentine Blount. The arrangement, if any, was terminated by mutual consent.’ A note of studied politeness from her mother left no doubt on my mind that her daughter’s engagement to me, too hastily entered into in the opinion of Mr. Montresor and herself, must now be regarded as finally terminated. ‘Mr. Blount would understand that, as no good purpose would be served by an interchange of letters or an interview, he would consult the feelings of the family by refraining from requiring either.’
“Such, and so worded in effect, was my congé. It was a hard fall. In more than one instance within my knowledge a fatal one.
“Last week, fortunatus nimium, I had stood on the very apex of human happiness. Rich—more than rich, the possessor of historic estates, with a commensurate rent-roll, above all ecstatically happy as the fiancé of the loveliest girl in England—high-born, highly endowed, the envy of my compeers, the admired of the crowd—a few short days saw me bereft of all but a moderate fortune, reduced in position, socially disrated, discarded by the woman of my passionate adoration.