‘I know I’ve made too strong running, know it well enough,’ answered the ex-cavalry officer, stroking his yellow moustache; ‘and I don’t deny, sir, that you have treated me very kindly as to money and that. But really and seriously, sir, can you wish me to marry Miss Willis?’
‘Really, my son, your pertinacity in cross-questioning me on the matter is—I am sure most unwittingly—almost offensive,’ replied Sir Sykes nervously. ‘Nor do I see what there would be so very wonderful in your selection of an amiable and accomplished girl, domiciled in your father’s house, and the daughter of—poor Willis!’ added the baronet in conclusion, as though the memory of the deceased major had suddenly recurred to him with unusual vividness.
Jasper, who remembered the conversation which he had overheard at The Traveller’s Rest, fairly gasped for breath. His parent’s talent for duplicity seemed to him to be something strange and shocking, as the untruthfulness of an elder generation always does appear.
‘I should not have urged my views upon you as I have done,’ continued Sir Sykes after a pause, ‘but that I have some idea that the young lady who has been the unconscious subject of this conversation entertains—what shall I say?—a preference for your society, which her feminine tact enables her to hide from general notice. I feel assured that it only rests with you to win the heart of Ruth Willis—a prize worth the winning.’
We are all very vain. Jasper, fop and worldling though he was, felt a thrill of gratified vanity run through him like an electric shock, as his father’s artful suggestion sank into the depths of his selfish mind. But he made haste to put in a disclaimer.
‘I’m afraid, sir, you are too partial a judge,’ he said, with an involuntary glance at the Venice mirror opposite. ‘Miss Willis is too sensible to care about a good-for-nothing fellow like me.’
‘I think otherwise, Jasper,’ returned Sir Sykes. ‘However, for the present we have talked enough. My wishes, remember, and even—even my welfare, for reasons not just now to be explained, are on the side of this marriage. Think it over. To you it means easy circumstances, a home of your own, the reversion of Carbery Chase, my cordial good-will, and the society of a charming and high-principled wife. Think it over.’
‘I will think it over, sir,’ said Jasper, rising from his chair, and lounging out of the library with the same listless swagger as that with which he had lounged into it. ‘I should be glad of course to meet your wishes, and that. Quite a surprise though.’
Left alone, Sir Sykes buried his face in his hands, and when he raised it again it looked old, worn, and haggard. ‘That scoundrel Hold,’ he said with a sigh, ‘makes me pay a heavy price for his silence, and even now his motives are to me a problem that I cannot solve.’
(To be continued.)