Mrs. Bullivant, when known to the world as Miss Onoria Flood, the only daughter and heiress of a wealthy brewer, was the lady chosen by Mr. Cortelyon for his son's prospective wife. He and Mr. Flood were neighbors, so to speak, for only a short half-dozen miles divided Uplands from Stanbrook, and when once the subject was broached--by the Squire in the first instance--they were not long in coming to a quiet understanding between themselves. Then Mr. Flood dropped a hint of what was in the wind to Onoria, who was a dutiful daughter, and at once fell in with her father's views. After that, all the Squire had to do was to recall his son from London and break the news to him. To Mr. Cortelyon the match seemed an eminently desirable one. Although the brewer did not come of a county family, he was most respectably connected, having one brother an archdeacon, and another high up in the service of John Company. But the great attraction of all lay in the fact that on coming of age Onoria would be entitled to a legacy of twenty thousand pounds bequeathed her by her grandfather. Further, she would be her father's sole heiress (he had Flood's word for that); and as the brewer was of a gouty habit and somewhat plethoric withal, it seemed not unlikely that---- Yes, in every way a most desirable match.
But we know what happened when Dick was told his father's goodwill and pleasure in the matter. However willing under other circumstances he might have been to fall in with the old man's views, he was precluded from doing so by the simple fact that he was already a married man. Thereupon followed the quarrel, and all that sad succession of events with which we are already acquainted.
But Onoria did not go long unwedded. Before six months had gone by she became the wife of the Hon. Hector Bullivant, the second son of Lord Cossington, an impecunious peer, whose estates were mortgaged up to the hilt. Neither affection nor sentiment had anything to do with the union. Onoria married for position, the Hon. Hector for money. Everybody who knew the young couple said that what followed was only what they had prophesied all along, so easy is it to be wise after the event.
The Hon. Hector was a notorious gambler and roué, and within a couple of years of his marriage he had contrived to dissipate his wife's fortune to the last guinea. A few months later he came by his end in a drunken brawl, greatly to the relief of everybody connected with him, leaving behind him one child, a boy a little over twelve months old. Then the widow went back home to her father, taking her son with her. Not long afterwards Mr. Flood was carried off in a fit of apoplexy.
When his will was read it was a terrible disappointment to Onoria to find that, instead of coming in for everything, as she had all along been led to expect she would, she was merely left an income of six hundred a year, together with the Uplands estate, and that everything else was left in trust for her son. She had known that her father was not likely to be a long liver, and, backed up by his wealth, she had looked forward to a brilliant rentrée into London society at no very distant date, with, it may be, a second and more brilliant marriage in the background. It was, indeed, a terrible disappointment.
Mrs. Bullivant at this period of her life was what is generally understood by the term "a fine woman," that is to say, she was built on ample lines, and was of generous proportions. Later on she would tend to obesity. She was black-eyed and black-haired, with regular features of a cold, statuesque type, which, as she was essentially unemotional and a thorough specimen of ingrained selfishness, formed a fair enough index to her disposition.
Such was the woman who came one day to see Squire Cortelyon on what she had been given to understand was likely to be his death-bed. As a matter of course, she knew of the quarrel between father and son, of Dick's untimely death, and of his having left a widow and a child whom the old man refused to acknowledge or to recognize in any way. She and the Squire had not met since a little while before her marriage; still, it seemed only what was due to good feeling and neighborly sympathy, more especially in view of what had happened in the past, that she should be desirous of seeing him once again before it was too late. If there was any other motive, or half-motive, at work below the surface, she would hardly have confessed its existence even to herself.
As already stated, the interview between her and the Squire lasted over an hour. By the time it came to an end the sick man was pretty well exhausted; still, he was glad, he was very glad, that he had seen her. Her visit had supplied him with a ray of light where all had been darkness before. She was a woman after his own heart--energetic, capable, a man as regarded business ability, of a like saving disposition and with an ambition similar to his own; that is to say, to become a great landed proprietor, or rather, that her son should become one when he grew up and came into his inheritance. He did not think that Flood had treated her as handsomely as he ought to have done. Still, Uplands was hers--a fine property, and one which could not have come into more capable hands.
Had the fates proved propitious, Onoria would have been his daughter-in-law; it was owing to no fault of hers that she was not; consequently she might, in a sense, be said to have a claim upon him. Why should he not leave her a life-interest in his landed property, the same, at her decease, to devolve upon her son, on condition of his adding the name of Cortelyon to his present one? But it was a project not to be hastily decided upon. He would think it over. And he did.