Burgo's Romance

by T. W. Speight

After a few more questions Burgo took his leave. Polly had nothing more of consequence to tell him.

From there he drove to Mr. Garden's office, only to learn, to his great disappointment, that the lawyer had gone for a brief holiday. He felt that he had never stood more in need of his counsel than just then. After a call on Mr. Hendry, the jobmaster, he made his way back to his lodgings.

The information furnished him by Polly with regard to Lady Clinton's destination had simplified matters for him exceedingly. Instead of following his uncle and her to Brussels--supposing them to have gone there--all he had now to do, so as at once to bring himself into proximity with them, was to book himself for Oakbarrow station by the night mail from Euston.

Burgo had been at Garion Keep for a couple of days with his uncle about six years previously, and only a short time after the latter had succeeded to the property--such as it was. It had been a bequest to him from a dear friend, an old bachelor without kith or kin, and he had run down from town, taking his nephew with him, to look at the place. It was an old-fashioned ramshackle structure, in a great state of disrepair, fronting the sea, and situated on a bleak and desolate reach of the Cumberland coast. Unfortunately the weather had been very cold and stormy during the time they were there, and Sir Everard, after a stay of forty-eight hours, during which he had never ceased to shiver, had been glad to turn his back on the place and to hurry southward again as fast as steam could carry him.

Now, it was quite conceivable to Burgo why Lady Clinton should be desirous of carrying off her husband to the Keep. There she would be able, so to speak, to immure him; there he would be lost to the world; there, without a creature to interfere with her, she would be able to slowly consummate her fell design. But what he could not understand was how her ladyship had become acquainted with the place and its suitability for her purpose. He could hardly believe that Sir Everard would have suggested it of his own accord, and yet Lady Clinton must surely have known something, nay, a good deal, about it before venturing with her invalid husband on so long a journey. From what Burgo had seen of her he took her pre-eminently for a woman who calculated each step before she took it, and made sure there was firm ground for her foot to rest upon.

As we have seen, it had been Burgo's intention to leave Euston that same evening by the mail train; but, in the course of the afternoon, in the act of leaping off a bus, he slipped and sprained his ankle so severely that for the next ten days he was a prisoner to his room, and compelled to divide his time between bed and sofa.

It was merely one instance more of l'homme propose.

[CHAPTER XII.]

FOUND.

Mr. Brabazon did not make the most patient or sweet-tempered of invalids, if a man may be termed an invalid who is laid up with nothing more serious than a sprained ankle. As it happened, he had no one but himself and his landlady to vent his ill-humour on, and as the latter was in the habit of bursting into tears on the slightest provocation, he kept her at arm's length as much as possible. What made him especially savage was that his accident should have happened at a time when every hour was, or seemed to him, of infinite consequence. What might not be happening at Garion Keep--to what straits might not his uncle be reduced--while he, Burgo, was lying on his back, a helpless log, unable to walk across the floor without exquisite pain? A score times a day he ground out maledictions between his teeth at the untoward fate which had thus scurvily laid him by the heels.