The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

She cast on him a grateful look. “Here is my favourite walk,” she said. “Let us turn into it. It is the most secluded spot in the grounds, and, as a rule, the gardener and I have it all to ourselves.”

It seemed as if she were pitifully desirous of delaying her revelation till the last possible moment. Now, however, she drew in her breath and took the plunge which could no longer be avoided. In brief but clear terms she proceeded to narrate to her astonished listener the details of that romantic episode of which she had been the baby heroine. She told him all as it had been told to her; she kept nothing back. Keymer listened with growing uneasiness. He had drawn one of her hands within his arm, and, as they strolled along, turning and retracing their steps from one end of the walk to the other, he pressed it gently to his side from time to time, as if to assure her that the sympathy he had promised her was hers in fullest measure.

There was a little space of silence after she had come to an end. He was turning over in his mind all that she had just told him, piecing together the different facts, and making of the narrative a connected whole. Had he formulated aloud the conclusion he presently arrived at, he would have stated it thus: “The old maids have all along been aware that the girl was no relative of theirs, and yet, with this knowledge clearly in their minds, they have chosen to make her their heiress; consequently, the simple fact of their having told her about certain things, which had previously been kept from her of set purpose, will in no way serve to alter the disposition of their property. She will still remain their heiress, and the world at large will not know otherwise than that she is their niece. Nothing will be changed.”

Launce’s brain worked nimbly on occasions of emergency, and the silence had not lasted more than half a minute before he flashed on Ethel one of his most seductive smiles. “Darling,” he said, in tones the tenderest at his command, “what you have now told me will only serve, if that be possible, to make you dearer to me than you were before. I assure you that I appreciate to the full the confidence thus placed in me. It proves what you may perhaps think stood in no need of proof—that you have a genuine regard for me, and unless that warmer sentiment which I trust in your case is not wholly absent be based on regard and—and on some measure of esteem, it can only be likened to one of those shallow-rooted plants which the first tempest infallibly uproots.”

Launce had an excellent memory, and his last sentence had been conveyed bodily from a novel he had lately been reading. “It is just the sort of trashy aphorism that Ethel would appreciate,” he had said to himself, and he had resolved to retain it in his mind till a suitable occasion should arise for making use of it. After a scarcely perceptible pause, he resumed:

“I am afraid you wronged me somewhat in your thoughts in making your confession, if I may be allowed to call it so, seem such a measure of necessity. As if any love worthy of the name could be affected, or lessened, by the fact of your being the child of unknown parents, and owing all you possess to the kindness of others in no way bound to you by the ties of kindred! I trust, for the honour of my sex, there are not many men with whom such considerations would have more weight than a grain of sand.”

He spoke with so much earnestness and with such a tone of conviction, that it was impossible for Ethel not to be impressed by his words. She glanced up into his face. He was certainly very good-looking, especially just now when his features were lighted up with what seemed to her like the glow of a chivalrous and high-souled passion. She told herself that he had never been so dear to her as at that moment. She felt that she almost loved him.

“It was not because I distrusted your affection that I told you what I did,” she said gently, “but as a simple matter of right and justice, in view of the relations that exist between us.”

“In any case, we may now regard it as an incident that is over and done with. For my part, I see no need for either you or I ever to refer to it again. And now, perhaps, I may be allowed to go in search of your aunts and explain to them the errand which has brought me here.”

“Yes, you have my permission to go now,” answered Ethel, with a smile that was born of a blush.